Eternity in an Hour
by mellowenglishgal
Summary: Anise Lavalière was one of the Harvest sacrifices. For nearly a year, she has watched, and waited - learning, planning. She's not interested in vengeance, or power; she wants what's best for her friends, her family, her generation. She's tired of the 'grown-ups' screwing everything up. She returns to preserve the balance, as Nature intended. The Originals, from an outsider's P.O.V.
1. Risky Move

**A.N.** : I'm hoping to write each of my TVD/TO stories in a different way. Giulia Salvatore's story is very anti-Klaus; in Sophia's story, I try to shelf my dislike and write Hayley and Klaus as more relatable; this story is from the perspective of a Harvest witch, one of my own creation, and after the first few chapters where she is a ghost, she has little interaction with the Originals, so the story is _The Originals_ , my version, from the perspective of someone outside of the Original family.

I hope you enjoy!

The working-title for this story was _12 Months a Ghost_.

* * *

 _Eternity in an Hour_

 _01_

 _Risky Move_

* * *

" _To see a World in a Grain of Sand_

 _And a Heaven in a Wild Flower_

 _Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand_

 _And Eternity in an hour_ "

 _Auguries of Innocence,_ William Blake

* * *

Her granny would always talk about the wheel of fortune. Ceaselessly grinding, rising and falling, fortunes altering with each groaning turn. Those at the bottom clawed their way back up with bloodied fingernails and a grit and determined mien that earned respect; sometimes those at the top seeped slowly down into despair, at other times the wheel spun, flinging them off.

The wheel had started creaking again. After months of idleness, the wheel was staring to groan with exertion as it picked up momentum, kicking up dust and churning things into motion, triggering a cascade of reactions and creating the first thread in a rich tapestry of the soon-to-be or never-will-be.

The coven had found a miracle. A staggering snag in the fabric of the supernatural world, a loophole that set fact and precedent off-kilter. A young-woman in her early-twenties, a werewolf with a crescent stamped on her shoulder, and pregnant. She had been wandering around the city for months, watching, learning, waiting, hope dwindling as the coven scrambled to evade Marcel's modern-day witch-hunt. And then the werewolf had sauntered into _Rousseau's_ and hope was rekindled. After months, the witches had a plan – Sophie Devereaux had a plan. And after messing up so epically, she had to risk everything to make it right. To her coven, to her dead sister. She owed it to the niece she had been trying to protect.

She watched the wheel turning, distanced from the violence and the hand of fate, Nature bringing everything into balance. She watched everything, everyone intrinsic to the conflict that had been ongoing since the first foundations of the city had been laid, the European émigrés and African slaves and ancient vampires encroaching on the land of the Native wolves who had lived in and around the bayou beyond memory. A swamp colony had turned into the nation's playground, surviving horrific natural disaster after manmade atrocities, hurricanes, flooding, fires – they picked up the pieces and had to make do with what was left. The New Orleanians had a long memory. Especially the supernatural ones.

To the living, the park looked quiet. Tranquil, especially in the dark. The cicadas were singing, she imagined the air was warm, comforting, strains of jazz from nearby bars drifted on the air, and a lone girl sat on a bench with a _Big Gulp_ and some tiny glass bottles that clinked together as she took them out of the pocket of her sleeveless cardigan. She had been watching this girl since she had sauntered into _Rousseau's_ asking for a glass of red wine and a bowl of Sophie's gumbo, poring over maps of the city, fiddling with a USB-stick and frowning to herself, starting every time the door opened. She didn't know why the girl was jumpy, but after Jane-Anne had sent her out to the bayou, she had every reason to be.

Pregnant, by an Original. By the biggest, nastiest evil there was in the supernatural world. The Originals were the monsters parents wove cautionary bedtime-stories about – behave, or an Original would come to steal you away in the middle of the night, to be their slave and perform spells at their beck and call, to _feed_ them.

She had never seen one before, they were the stuff of legend, of a chapter in New Orleans' history that had eclipsed by the end of the Great War. Their reign had ended; Marcel had swept up the ashes of the burned city and rebuilt what would become his kingdom, ruling from the Vieux Carré, from one of the oldest buildings in the city that he turned into a nightclub every couple weeks and let his 'night-walkers' feast on innocent clubbers. Every local knew to avoid the _Abattoir_. She had watched a night-walker hand out a leaflet to the nightclub to Hayley as she drifted around the Quarter, talking herself up to aborting her baby.

Of all the impossible choices, this was one she was glad she didn't have to make. As the werewolf with a crescent stamped on her shoulder sighed and gazed into the cup laced with aconite and jimsonweed, she watched on. She had a very expressive face; Granny would say she had no guile. Everything she thought was there to read in her large eyes and pouting lips, the way her cheeks drew in, hollowed, as she thought, biting the inside of her cheek, her lower-lip, sighing.

"Come on, Hayley. One little upset stomach and all this stupid drama is ancient history…"

The werewolf-girl stared into the cup; she saw her recoil, repelled by the scent her heightened werewolf senses picked up sharply, the two poisons combined to cancel out a life that had begun by accident – by the combination of alcohol and poor decisions. Not the baby's fault, but Hayley Marshall's choice.

The hardest thing about being dead was watching, with no way of influencing how things played out. She watched, and she regretted people's mistakes, and wondered how people who presumed to call themselves 'adults' and leaders of their community could make so many poor decisions.

Without its consent, without any reason beyond being the offspring of the Original called Klaus, people wanted to use an unborn baby, threatened its safety, to get what they wanted.

The problem wasn't the baby. The problem was the people who wanted to hurt it. Sophie had nothing to lose, so why would she not stoop to threaten an unborn baby in her plan to resurrect her teenaged niece? To leverage the Original family to destroy Marcel.

The thing was – Sophie and the others had turned their coven into the bad guys. The evil ones willing to leverage an infant, pure and innocent, to complete a blood-ritual for power. An outsider would see only zealous witches set on slaughtering their innocents for more magic. The Harvest should have meant more to that. But she wasn't naïve – a true believer would never have considered the Harvest purely for a stronger power-base against vampires.

Hayley lowered the cup, chewing her lower lip. She sighed, stood, and glanced over her shoulder, frowning, as she heard a rustle. Even dead, her stomach knotted in anxiousness, as a vampire appeared behind her. Hayley's nose lifted delicately into the air, her eyes narrowing, and she turned, recoiling as a vampire's eyes blackened, veins flickering, fangs sharpening.

"You're comin' with me, _wolf_ ," he snarled aggressively.

"I have had it up to _here_ with vampires telling me what to do!" Hayley hissed, throwing the cup of poisons in his face. He yelled, his skin sizzling, and Hayley whirled around to escape. Two more night-walkers had appeared, blocking her way.

Her jaw dropped, as something absurd happened.

Hayley started to transform. She had heard of hybrids, whispers of a slaughtered dozen of them had reached the Vieux Carré coven, trouble within vampire-territory in Virginia – linked to the Originals. But Hayley was a werewolf, pure and simple; she had no special abilities, no distinction except for that birthmark she kept covered on her shoulder.

But there it was – eyes darkening to a strange, glowing amber-black, fangs dripping, her filed and buffed but unpainted fingernails sharpening to blackish claws. And the shock on her attackers' faces as she ripped one's throat out… She was too shocked not to turn away, rooted to the spot, watching as the moody girl turned into a monster, taking a good chunk out of one vampire's throat, and turning to the other, mauling him beyond recognition, tearing his heart from the ribcage she had prised open like a tin of soup.

The first vampire, clutching his bleeding but healing throat, panted, " _Hybrid_."

" _Pregnant_ ," Hayley barked, dropping the bloody heart on the sidewalk beside the unrecognisable body. She hovered alongside, appalled, but it was less surreal than watching _The Walking Dead_. This shit was _legit_. "And _really_ pissed off." She grabbed the guy's head, and with a grunt, tore it right off his neck. Gore splattered everywhere – it was _way_ messier than on TV! His body landed with a heavy and decisive _thump_ on the ground, his head rolling into a flowerbed, already forgotten, as Hayley's fangs receded, her eyes softening to their normal pretty hazel, but full of anger.

She set off, throwing the little bottles of poison into the next trashcan she passed, long purposeful strides, eyes skittish at the bloodshed, the scene of a _murder_ to unknowing passers-by, wiping her face on the hem of her dark dress and frowning as she rediscovered the _Abattoir_ pamphlet she had crumpled in her cardigan pocket earlier. The _Abattoir_ , Marcel's lair, ' _Where the party never ends…_ ' was the slogan for the nightclub; the locals added a little extra, in distaste: '… _and the blood never stops flowing_ '.

Hayley frowned, took stock of her surroundings – poring over those maps she had to have learned the layout of the Quarter well enough by now, she'd practically lived in _Rousseau's_ , after all; Sophie had set up Jane-Anne's spell slipping necessary, undetectable ingredients into Hayley's favourite gumbo. It looked like she was steeling her nerves, drawing on all her natural grit and determination, and set off, stalking toward the _Abattoir_.

She trailed beside, curious, unseen, wishing she had pockets in her blood-spattered ivory dress to dawdle idly beside the angry werewolf.

There it was – the _Abattoir_. It was a great name and few tourists ever looked up the French translation – _slaughterhouse_ : it just had a great old-NOLA feel, an unconventional setting for a nightclub but totally in keeping with French Quarter traditions of jazz, debauchery and indulgence, gorgeous and eerie and a little smoky and full of character. Like a great bourbon.

Alive, she had never been inside; a couple of her older friends had, it was Poppy's best meal of the week, and before the Harvest one of her friends in the Tremé had been _associated_ with one of the newish night-walkers. She was disappointed tonight; it was barely eight p.m. and Marcel's underlings were still setting up for the party. She could imagine the place had once been very beautiful and timeless, three storeys in the old Spanish style with open galleries and a great courtyard. She had wandered through the halls and explored the place for months, eavesdropping on Marcel's conversations, learning his ticks, what motivated him, imagining what the huge property had been like in previous centuries. It had always belonged to the Originals; it was their insignia stamped everywhere, before it had ever been Marcel's calling-card.

Hayley stomped through the front-gate, where horse-drawn carriages had once entered and circled the courtyard. Vampires didn't have the same supernatural instincts that had been honed over the last millennium; werewolves could 'sniff out' vampires like Granny could a freshly-baked cake. It was a honed, exact art and a life-saver to werewolves, who preferred to skulk out of sight if an enemy was too big to take down without the rest of their pack. She approached the nearest vampire.

"Where's Marcel?"

"Who wants to know?"

"The werewolf he just sent his lackeys to murder," Hayley said fiercely.

"Someone asked for me?"

Hayley's sharp eyes glanced up, and Marcel Gerard, King of the Quarter, descended a rickety staircase into the courtyard, a smile beaming bright from ear to ear, the epitome of laidback cool. Effortless, sociable, charismatic, he was a cool glass of lemonade on a breathless Louisiana summer's day, and she didn't mind admitting he was something special to look at. She liked him; he treated people fairly. The vampires of the city were his family. New Orleans was his home. He protected both, nurtured both, took pride in both. And until the Harvest, he had been very much about live-and-let-live with regards to the other supernatural communities who claimed New Orleans as their home, their sanctuary. Unless someone encroached on his territory, or broke his rules. Vampire, witch, human or werewolf alike, it didn't matter; break Marcel's rules and there was no help to be had.

"Met three of your friends in Bienville Park," Hayley snarled angrily. "Thought you might wanna send some of your minions to go pick up the pieces."

Marcel gave her a measuring look. "You killed three of my guys?"

"You sent three of your guys to murder a pregnant girl." Marcel's eyes widened slightly, falling to her stomach. She wondered if he was listening; she couldn't hear a heartbeat, but then, she was a dead witch, as a living one she'd had her gifts but supernatural hearing wasn't one of them. She knew Elijah had heard a baby's heartbeat fluttering in Hayley's womb; from that moment on he'd been entranced.

"Let's take this someplace private," Marcel said, in his smooth, rich voice. Hayley gave him a look, and fell in step with him as he strolled out of the Abattoir. She stayed and listened to some of the gossip exploding in the courtyard among the night-walkers, checked on some of them seeking out the remnants of their friends in Bienville Park, and sat cross-legged on a table between two strangers chatting adult-romance novels, watching Hayley and Marcel. _Café du Monde_ was a staple of New Orleans, the scent of fresh pastry and confectioners' sugar mingling with the chatter and hum of the city. Twenty-four hours a day, open every day except Christmas and hurricanes, _Café du Monde_ was a huge tourist draw – especially when Kim Kardashian flew down especially for the beignets on her show. Ugh. But Marcel knew the traditions, gave a visitor to his city the full experience.

"First time eating one of these, you have to blow the powdered-sugar off and make a wish," Marcel instructed Hayley, setting two café au laits – one decaf – on the table with a tray of still-sizzling beignets. There were perks to being King of New Orleans; he'd jumped to the head of the line.

"How do you know I haven't had one before?"

"The look on your face, like you have no idea where to start."

"Are you talking about the beignets or the conversation I thought we were gonna have in private?"

"Ah, more privacy in a crowd," Marcel shrugged nonchalantly. "So, you claim you killed three vampires in Bienville Park. I did have one of my guys send some men into the park. But they were tracking down a wolf. And I've seen my fair share of werewolves; it's not the full-moon, honey, and if it was, I sure as hell wouldn't be sitting back relaxing, buying you beignets. So why don't you tell me who you are, before my guys report in to me from the Park. I know you're from out of town; rules are, you don't kill vampires in my city. That goes for my guys as well."

"You don't kill vampires – but you execute witches on street-corners and run the werewolves out of town," Hayley countered, her eyes sharp on Marcel as he leisurely ate a beignet. If she hadn't known he was a vampire before, she would have suspected he was something supernatural just by the way he could eat a beignet without getting a speck of powdered-sugar on his polo-shirt.

"Well, you know who I am," Marcel said. "You've heard I'm king around here or you wouldn't have asked for me, wouldn't have known I sent guys after a werewolf in Bienville Park. So you know I have rules. It's a new one; witches in the Vieux Carré coven can't use magic. Punishable by death."

"Aren't you curious why Jane-Anne Devereaux used magic a couple weeks ago?" Hayley asked. "You've gotta be curious why Klaus came back to town after so long. He left like a century ago, right?"

"What do you know about that?" Marcel asked quietly.

"I know you shouldn't have sent your brain-dead lackies after me," Hayley said tartly. "I know why Klaus came back and is making trouble. And I know you have Elijah stashed somewhere; I also know why Jane-Anne Devereaux did magic."

"Alright; I'll bite. Why?"

"Me."

"You."

"I'm pregnant."

"I know."

"You know Klaus is a hybrid, right? Lifted some ancient curse? There's a really boring story about how he could sire hybrids like him, using a doppelgänger's blood or whatever," Hayley said, sighing and rolling her eyes. Her bravado and attitude made her chafe; Marcel didn't seem impressed either, but he was curious, and he couldn't hide it. She knew he hadn't been sleeping well worrying about why Klaus was suddenly back – and what it meant for him, his family, everything he had built.

"I heard," Marcel said quietly. "He disappeared a couple decades ago, I never heard anything until we got word he'd lifted the Sun and Moon Curse."

"Load of bullshit that was," Hayley sniffed angrily. "You know, I wouldn't even care, one way or the other, he's a jackass, only, there's a loophole. Now that he's a full hybrid, he can father children."

Marcel's eyes narrowed.

"What're you saying?"

"I'm saying Klaus got me pregnant after a bottle of scotch and some banter over crappy artwork," Hayley said bluntly, her voice dripping with self-disgust and irony. "The scotch was gorgeous; I regret every drop. But the fact is, I'm pregnant and I came to New Orleans trying to find out about my birth-parents. And a witch performed a spell that linked me to her sister. So she could blackmail Klaus into destroying you."

Marcel stared at her, sipping his café au lait, mulling things over before he responded.

"And why would you tell me this?"

"Because some witch has linked her life to mine and my baby's and I'm not about to let some stranger who wants to start a war control my life," Hayley said fiercely. "Elijah told you about Klaus' blood so you'd give him Jane-Anne's body, right? And he did that because Sophie Devereaux had threatened to kill me and the baby if he didn't convince Klaus to help them take you down. I only came here to find out about my parents; I just found out I'm pregnant at the same time someone leveraged my baby over an Original. I don't care what's going on in this city, but I don't want any part of whatever you and Klaus have got going on."

Marcel watched her carefully, his expression guarded but solemn. He set his empty coffee-cup down, narrowing his eyes on her. "You sold him out to his enemy?"

"Who? Klaus? Uh, yeah, he told the witches to kill me and the baby," Hayley said tartly, and honestly, seething with anger. "All I care about's getting Elijah back, and making sure my baby doesn't have any part in this mess. They both deserves better."

"Elijah deserves better?" Marcel chuckled darkly.

Hayley's expression was calm and sombre, like she was disappointed in Marcel. "Elijah was kind to me. He heard the baby's heartbeat and that was it, he was all in, before he even learned my name. He did everything he could to protect me and the baby. So, yeah, he deserves better than to be stabbed in the heart by his own brother and handed over to you like some kind of collateral, insurance that Klaus will behave – because everyone knows he doesn't care; he keeps coffins on standby to put his siblings in. And Elijah can't die. So the only person who was kind to me and protected me from whatever you've stirred up here is lying in a box. Yeah, he deserves better."

Marcel stared at her. "You're serious about all this."

"Would I be here if I wasn't?" Hayley shot back, scowling. "Look, I just want to _not_ be a prisoner in my own life. I'm knocked up and I have _no_ idea what I'm doing, and Elijah cared."

"What's your name?"

"Hayley. Marshall."

"Well, Hayley Marshall, you know I have a rule about killing vampires. But my biggest rule is, no abusing kids. I apologise, for sending my guys after you. If I'd known I never would've put out the hit," Marcel said earnestly. "I guess you should come meet one of my friends."

That was how Hayley Marshall, the pregnant werewolf, had met Davina. Locked up in her candlelit attic like Rapunzel safe from the evils of the world, Marcel had introduced Hayley. They had told her about the Harvest, why Hayley had been targeted by the witches as leverage to bring Marcel down. Davina had struggled with the spell she didn't know, but had eventually unbound Hayley from Sophie Devereaux.

"What about Elijah?" Hayley asked quietly, her eyes dancing toward the coffin shining in the candlelight.

"Aw, you can have him back," Marcel shrugged.

"Really? Thought you were keeping him as collateral so Klaus behaved."

"The only person who could make Klaus behave is Elijah," Marcel sighed, shaking his head. "Won't make a difference in the scheme of things, Klaus's got it in his head to take what I built, won't matter to him he doesn't have the excuse of your safety to ruin my empire anymore. The seed's been sown. Klaus could never stand someone else playing with a toy he got it in his head he wanted; he'd take it and destroy it so no-one else could have it."

"Yeah," Hayley sighed. "That's what I'm worried about."

"Since you said Elijah did what he did to protect you and the kid, why don't you wait here 'til he wakes," Marcel said, glancing from Hayley to Davina. "You three might wanna talk things over."

Anger simmered under her skin as she watched the two girls breach awkwardness and start opening up to each other, powerless to do anything but memorise every nasty thing Davina said about the witches, her family, her _friends_. And Elijah woke. They talked about the Harvest for hours, until Hayley's stomach grumbled, and Elijah went to get the girls takeout – barbeque from _The Joint_. Ribs, brisket, mac n' cheese, slaw. Further proof Elijah was some kind of god: not a speck of barbecue sauce on his suit did fall. It was funny to watch him chew and suck every last bit of meat off the ribs, until they gleamed. A vampire didn't need to eat, but she knew a few who loved maintaining the sociability and tradition of sharing meals.

It was only when she watched other people enjoying their meals did she remember that she hadn't eaten in months, and was never hungry. She was…nothing. She felt nothing, not the heat of the shards of late-evening sunlight filtering through the shuttered windows or the breeze tickling through the stifling attic, the smell of the brisket and mac n' cheese and the sweat dotting Hayley's shoulders and Davina's lip.

She listened to Davina talk about the witches.

She had always been taught that witch business stayed within the covens; no matter the politics going on between the Nine, they kept werewolves and vampires out of it. It was the only insurance policy they had for the survival of their shared heritage; when it came down to warfare, the covens took on the tactics of the Cold War rather than brutal medieval Crusades and guerrilla violence. They were above using the vampires and cursed werewolves to wipe each other out. That was unforgiveable.

The other eight covens had turned their backs on the witches from the Vieux Carré, but she couldn't blame them, when Marcel had wiped out nearly her entire coven. People she had grown up around, seeing at parties and special occasions, people she had learned from, people she disliked or adored or hadn't said two words to or stifled the urge to yawn when they lectured at the Lycée. Not all of her coven had been slaughtered the night she was sacrificed, but after that night, Marcel and his minions had started to wage a war against them. Monique's mother was killed ensuring the coven had some way to complete the Harvest, reap some good from all of the awful her sister Sophie had brought down on them when she let slip to Marcel and Father O'Connell what was happening.

Davina was barely fifteen when they prepared for the Harvest. She had watched, for months, amazed by her spiteful cowardice, using _their_ magic to punish their families, their friends. To allow Marcel to use her as a weapon against the Quarter witches, a lot of whom had never harmed a person in their lives, lived with their gifts with no outlet to use them – she had watched, appalled that because of Davina's spite, an unborn baby was being used as leverage over Original vampires to destroy the meticulous balance that kept the supernatural world from tearing itself apart. As brazen and risky as Hayley's actions had been, killing those vampires and marching in to the Abattoir full of night-walkers, she was glad at least that the link was broken. If being resurrected meant her coven threatened an unborn baby, she'd stay dead, and hope the witches who remained learned something from their loose lips, sharing secrets that could be used against them. The vampires had turned something pure and essential, the sacrifice, into something hideous, unnatural, _evil_. There was no evil in the world, only balance, and the combined actions of Father Kieran, Marcel, Sophie Devereaux and Davina had thrown that balance off, turned her world on its axis and warped perspective. The witches weren't the bad guys. But the way Davina told it, they were. It didn't matter that in _not_ being willing to die for her friends, she had allowed dozens of others to be slaughtered – hell, she had _helped_ Marcel track innocent witches down – while she fostered her self-righteous anger and the boulder on her shoulder.

At least Marcel was clever enough to have understood that having Davina destroy the link between Hayley and Sophie Devereaux ensured Davina's continued safety up in the attic of St Anne's Catholic Church, gave the Originals no excuse to gun for everything he had built.

"I'm afraid neutralising yourself as the witches' leverage will make no difference," Elijah sighed, as he and Hayley wandered down the street. Hayley looked more at peace walking beside him than she had in weeks. The resting bitch-face was strong with that one, as were the exaggerated eye-rolls, but it was all bluster and false bravado. Put her in a sticky situation, and she tucked tail and ran – straight to the biggest bully on the playground for protection. Wasn't that how Hayley had landed in this situation – pregnant by the Original hybrid, threatened by witches. Elijah sighed. "Niklaus accepted the witches' deal merely as an excuse to take what Marcel has created here."

"It's kind of a waste," Hayley said. "Vampires aside, I mean… Witches and vampires living out in the open like this, huge communities of them? Have you ever seen anything like it?"

"A few times," Elijah sighed, gazing around the glittering street. The French Quarter was beautiful any time of year, night or day, in sweltering heat or mist rolling in from the sea.

"And what usually happens?"

"Nature preserves the balance."

"What does that mean?"

"Nature keeps checks and balances," Elijah said softly. "Moments like this shall define the future. Lives shall be reaped, new alliances sown. The strongest and wiliest will survive; the excess will be culled. Balance." Hayley laughed softly to herself. "This amuses you?"

"It's _Game of Thrones_ , supernatural-style," she tutted, smirking. "In the game of thrones, you win or you die."

"Oh, please do not mention the reference to Niklaus. His ego needs little stroking; give him no reason to compare himself to Jon Snow as the bastard with questionable origins and a glorious destiny…"

"You're a thousand-year-old vampire, and you watch _Game of Thrones_?" Hayley said disbelievingly.

"It reminds me of my youth," Elijah shrugged elegantly.

"Your life was really like that?"

"For the first five or six centuries, very much so," Elijah said quietly, and Hayley's eyes widened. "Imagine the Red Wedding – with fangs."

"Right," Hayley grimaced, her eyes widening. "Anyway, Jon Snow's not the only bastard – and your brother has the reputation of being more of a Ramsay." Elijah chuckled.

"Mm. A reputation he has more than earned, I'm ashamed to admit," he sighed. He eyed Hayley critically. "It was a dangerous thing you did, approaching Marcel."

"Look, I'm still wrapping my head around being pregnant by a thousand-year-old vampire who lifted some ancient curse to make him… _not_ -sterile after a millennium," Hayley said, shaking her head. "Tonight I realised, no matter what, I'm not gonna let anyone hurt my baby. And I sure as hell won't let anyone use it – or me – to justify destroying lives."

"And so what now?"

"Well, there's no way in hell I'm going back to the plantation," Hayley said sternly. "It's a pretty house, Elijah, but…"

"Speak your mind, Hayley," Elijah coaxed gently, a smile flirting on his lips.

"I'm gonna have a baby. Your brother's apparently the one who impregnated me. Now that the link's broken the witches can't hurt me, Marcel knows who I am and that I'm pregnant, the only danger I see… I'm not living in a houseful of vampires, let alone my psychotic one-night-stand who told the witches to kill me and my baby, and stuck a dagger in your heart and handed you over to Marcel like you were a piece of junk," Hayley said, letting out a pent-up breath. "He's starting a _war_ – and it has nothing to do with the baby, I'm smart enough to recognise he's doing everything for himself, for his ego or whatever. And my kid is _not_ growing up the way I did; I don't care if I have to cut out its father to make sure it has a great life. So I have to figure out how I'm gonna _live_."

"And why are you telling me this?"

"Because you're the only one who's been all-in from the second you heard the baby's heartbeat, and that includes me. I want my kid to grow up knowing that…unconditional love and support," Hayley said quietly, gazing at Elijah. "You're…gonna be an uncle. I guess I just wanna know…will you help me? Even if it means not being King of the Quarter or whatever, if it only means babysitting when I pick up a late shift at work to cover the cost of diapers?"

Elijah's smile was slow and earnest. "Of course… Niklaus will not be happy."

"It's not about what he wants," Hayley said sharply, a little indignant. Her voice softened as she sighed, "It's about what's best for the baby."

"They should not be mutually exclusive," Elijah sighed, and they wandered on. "What he said in the cemetery… He did not mean it."

"He did," Hayley said, with a bite. "Whatever, I don't care; deadbeat dads aren't new."

"He is the child's father."

"And how many fathers has he slaughtered? He murdered my friend's _mom_ – and she was one of the good ones," Hayley said quietly. "After everything he's done, he's gonna have to earn the right to have anything to do with this kid. I won't let him hurt it the way he hurts everyone else around him… According to Rebekah he _raised_ Marcel since childhood – now he's gonna destroy everything he built? Just out of spite or jealousy?"

Elijah sighed, but strolled along beside Hayley.

"So you are determined to do this alone?"

"I'm not alone," Hayley said, glancing at him. "You're here. I couldn't give a damn about Klaus, and your sister's a bitch but she came all the way here because she was worried about you… She seems angry at me for being knocked up."

"Oh, Rebekah doesn't hate you for your pregnancy," Elijah sighed. "She _envies_ you. All Rebekah has ever wanted was a family of her own, a home where she felt safe, someone to love her unconditionally… Niklaus destroys every flickering moment of joy she discovers for herself…"

"And now he's gonna be a father," Hayley sighed, shaking her head. Elijah nodded, and Hayley glanced at her. "So…do you need to – _feed_ or something?"

"I have satisfied my need for blood, thank you," he said quietly. "And the ribs were some of the best I have enjoyed in years." Hayley chuckled softly. "Well… You have stated your intent. When do you propose to move out of the plantation-house?"

"As soon as possible," Hayley said quietly. "I just…don't know how Klaus is gonna react."

"You let me worry about Niklaus," Elijah murmured. "He is my brother; he is my responsibility. And on my life, I well let nothing harm your child." Hayley turned, and startled Elijah with a hug. He stood there, blinking, wide-eyed and caught off-guard.

"Thank you," Hayley said fervently.

"For what?"

"For already loving my baby unconditionally," she said softly.

"Always and forever," Elijah promised, as she let him go. Hayley beamed shyly, and they wandered off, discussing apartments versus shotgun-houses with a tiny yard, obstetricians and po-boys and car-seats and étouffée and ancient Norwegian names that made Hayley bark with laughter, creasing up at the idea of calling her child Hvisterk or Angrboða.

Watching Elijah and Hayley was interesting. They weren't close, but they were like-minded when it came to her pregnancy, and he supported her. He supported her decision to live alone, setting the precedent for boundaries that anyone who wanted to be in her life had to respect. He gave her a loan she suspected he had no intention of letting her repay to put a deposit on a small shotgun-house. Marcel texted her an appointment with an obstetrician in the know that he trusted, and Hayley invited Elijah along for her first scan. Elijah watched the screen, his lips slightly parted in wonder, entranced, and she watched Elijah. Hayley's face was solemn as she gazed at the screen, sighing.

"There's really something in there, huh," she murmured, her eyes glued to the screen. She swallowed, and a look of determination and acceptance and happiness settled on her features, a confusing wash of emotions that came with realising she was pregnant – that she was going to be a mother. That she had created life with a psychotic vampire-werewolf hybrid known as the greatest evil of the last millennium. Indiscriminate murder, manipulation of the innocent, terrorising small towns and taking anything he wanted despite – sometimes in spite of – the repercussions for everyone else.

It didn't matter that Hayley was no longer the witches' leverage to bring Marcel down. The witches had set Klaus on a path to destroy Marcel; he just no longer needed them as an excuse. The witches fought for their coven, for their sacrificed daughters. Marcel fought for his kingdom, the community he had built with determination, charisma and political alliances. Klaus fought for himself.

The other players had the benefit of allies; Klaus had alienated any who would support him. In fighting to flatter his own ego and take what another man had built, forsaking any connection to or responsibility for his unborn child, he had lost the respect of the only people in his life who should have mattered to him.

The Originals had long memories, and ancient history. They were a family who despised each other. Their dynamics were complicated and ever-shifting, every conversation, every act, defining how alliances were shaped that day. There were never any apologies, no remorse for their actions, no contrition – and that was just with each other. The sister spent her time being bullied and belittled by Klaus, coddled and adored by Elijah; Elijah tried to be the supportive paternal figure but allowed Klaus to get away with doing whatever he wished in the hopes he could elicit a change in behaviour. And Klaus continued to exhibit the behaviour he had built his reputation on over a thousand years: manipulative, merciless and self-deluded. The Original family was a festering cluster-fuck of a thousand years' worth of rage, betrayal, heartbreak, jealousy, all roiling inside a powder-keg. No matter the size of the spark, or who lit the match, it didn't matter; the Originals would always rise from the ashes. They were as much bound to each other for eternity as they were to walk the earth until the end of time, trapped in bodies that could not die, could never alter.

Nothing but a very great _something_ stood a chance of altering the very fabric of who they were, when they had been a thousand years in the making.

She wondered if Hayley's baby stood a chance.

* * *

 **A.N.** : Hi, please let me know what you think.


	2. An Exquisite Execution

**A.N.** : For _sophiewhettingsteel_ , the first to review this new story! Thank you! Considering they are the only reason the war started between Marcel and the witches, it's tragic that the Harvest girls are footnotes. Also to my unnamed guest who left a review, and to _BloodyAvenger21_ – thank you! So do I!

So, I should probably warn you, this story is going to follow _The Originals_ , to an extent. Meaning, I'm scrapping what I don't like about _The Originals_ , adding new characters, reworking dynamics, generally making things, in my humble opinion, better! And I'm trying to do something different from my other two TVD/TO stories.

* * *

 _Eternity in an Hour_

 _02_

 _An Exquisite Execution_

* * *

During Marcel's tenure as elected king of the vampires, the various supernatural factions had cohabited the city with a delicate balance of power. That fragile peace had shattered the moment Marcel and his henchmen had appeared in Lafayette Cemetery the night of the Harvest; now the city was descending into chaos. A teenaged bitch had aided and abetted the vampires who had spent nearly a year terrorising and executing their friends. And long-dead witches were abusing the sacrifices of the living to settle old scores.

It was frustrating, but she watched, and took mental notes. What else was she going to do? She was dead! And it gave her the advantage of a lifetime. Or, afterlife. Sometime soon, the Harvest would be completed, she would be resurrected, and then…she didn't know, but at least she'd have a few golden kernels of life-saving information – a vague comprehension of the warped dynamic between the Original vampires; their connection to the werewolf Hayley… She'd spent hours watching the Crescent wolves turning into men in the bayou by the light of a full moon. She had never seen anything more macabre – or more beautiful. It had taken her breath away. She'd never seen a werewolf turn before, and wasn't likely ever to be able to mystically gouge the images from her mind even if she'd wanted to. She had watched the werewolves and the shifting dynamic of their alphas – two young men, from the oldest bloodlines of Louisiana werewolves, together they led the wolves. As men, they were very different.

The only Quarter witches left now were the disenfranchised. The elderly but less influential, too tired to join a rebellion; the outcasts, the ones without sufficient power or charisma or interest to make themselves integral to the fabric of their coven; the young ones with untapped power and no education in the finer arts of magic, easily influenced and bullied; the ones who simply wanted to stick their heads in the sand, glad for another day passing where they weren't caught out by a day-walker, to live their lives as normal people, glad it wasn't their children used in the failed Harvest. Their coven had never been sprawling like those of the Ninth Ward or Garden District, but they had once been a force to be reckoned with, even against the more formidable covens of the Tremé and Algiers. And there were still some left, her friends, people who weren't leaders of their coven who had escaped Marcel's slaughter and were smart enough to keep their heads down as the Elders waged war on the vampires.

But none of them were going to risk getting in the way of the old witches who had hijacked their ancient ritual. Papa Tunde, Genevieve, Bastianna. Drawn back from death by the witch who called herself Céleste, the remorseless manipulator who had overtaken bodies and stolen lives for two centuries without being caught. They killed whoever got in their way, and called it justice. It was vengeance, pure and simple. Nothing to do with the covens or the good of the city but for their own wounded egos, their self-loathing of actions taken and decisions made that had led to their deaths.

Anise was only a French Quarter witch through her father's family. Her parents had wanted her to grow up with other children like her, never having to live in fear of her own secret. Given the choice, she would have followed Granny, who practiced a purer, older form of magic, with reliance only on Nature, upholding the balance, at once darker and brighter than anything the witches bound to Ancestral Magic could channel. The Ancestors had too many rules, too many conflicting personalities and vendettas and bigotries for any one witch – even a group – to appease for a favour. She knew; currently, she was one of them.

And she had been spending her afterlife learning the loopholes.

She had been spending it _learning_. Absorbing all the knowledge she could from ancestors of the nine covens. Over three centuries of witches being born to or arriving in the trade-ports of New Orleans had given the nine covens their own unique traditions, ancient magic, exquisite spells, history, grudges, competition. Though she was part of the Vieux Carré coven, each of the Nine were bound by frail ties to ancestral magic. She learned as much as she could from a mutilated slave on pure sacrificial magic all the way from ancient traditions of deepest Africa; a vivacious Parisian burlesque dancer who had emigrated in the 1890s taught her tarot and captromancy in a delicious gurgling accent, and they played imaginary blackjack, or _Vingt et un_ as she called it, and told her where to find bottles of legitimate 1920s bourbon and bonds worth thousands of dollars. A very well-dressed middle-aged Austrian violinist killed in the massacre of 1820 had taught her libanomancy, scrying with smoke – his preferred method was to use cigars, and he had found himself more open to its effects after a few juleps. She learned protective hoodoo; ancient Nordic magic the pagan rituals had evolved from that was neither good nor evil but a balance of both. She spent time with three teenagers killed in a car-accident in the Nineties who had played with their magic, having fun, creating exquisite spells that did nothing but showed Nature at its most beautiful, goofing off, concocting 'love potions' and non-harmful hallucinogenic drafts and incenses.

It was strange to make friends in death. To realise that people she had never known were there, waiting, willing to help her, wistful for some connection to a world they no longer had a share in, tied to the city to regret their actions. She learned secrets. Playrooms left untouched for a century; caches of stolen Dark Objects best destroyed than ever discovered; bodies never found. She took mental notes, and she learned. She watched. She became quite the unblushing voyeur, living vicariously through other people's bad decisions.

She went out of her way to avoid the ones she didn't trust, the ones too eager to teach her, the ones Monique trailed after.

Mommy taught her potions.

How to acquire the family grimoires hidden at home; where her family kept rare herbs and spices coveted by witches all over the world. How to cultivate the blossom of particular plants and harvest sap; the uses of werewolf claws in potions – how to help werewolves use the magic of those claws in ancient traditions she learned from a Native shaman – and how to manipulate vampire blood in spells, to use their nature against them. To ask Granny to teach her everything she knew; her nature spells, the practices and potions she had learned in India; the healing spells she had created through sheer necessity at the Front. Healing poisons, calming powders; using special stones and the stars to channel for more power; to link specific emotions to trigger spells and how to _write_ enchantments.

And most importantly, to have faith in herself, and never underestimate her tenacity, her intelligence or her kindness.

Since she was twelve years old all she had wanted was one more day with her mother.

Even an eternity wasn't enough.

She had forgotten all sense of time. It felt like she had been dead forever. And at the same time, only an hour.

But when it was her turn…

Dying was "quicker and easier than falling asleep", in the words of Sirius Black. And it was true. It had been effortless. She had watched her own body crumple at her feet, her pristine ivory satin dress splattered with scarlet. She had heard the screams, too shocked to react herself, and watched, as the vampires slaughtered other girls from her coven. Watched her own magic flow from her to Cassie, to Monique…lastly to Davina, who had abused their sacrifice.

She had known she was dead not because of her body lying at her feet, but because of the weightlessness. She had been born a witch, with magic flowing through her veins, untapped at first, but always there, like a hum in her blood, golden and soothing. She had never known what it felt like to be without it. Lost. Disconnected. She had taken her ties to Nature for granted. That _connection_. Not just the magic flowing through her, but the indescribable understanding of the fabric of the world. She missed the whispering of seeds growing beneath the soil, the sighs of the breeze that carried the cicadas' song and the chirping of the birds, the quiet, ceaseless empire of Nature's work, in the warmth of the sun and the pollinating butterflies and drone of the bees, she missed the _life_ all around her. And the sense in the back of her mind that rain would fall in an hour's time, the instinct that it was Chantal in tears before the phone even rang, her innate ability to sense what natural remedy an ill person truly needed over any drugstore's pills, sensing people's emotions, reading their auras, _noticing_ things.

Granny, Chantal, her _dad_ , she missed Poppy and Kenzi and Jake. She missed her family, her friends – she missed _people_ , not things, though she'd sat in her favourite movie-theatre for hours on end watching new releases when she needed a break from the endless lessons, to pass the time she no longer felt when she could no longer pick up a book or hang out with Chantal.

She wasn't without her secrets, even in death, and there were loopholes to Davina's monopoly over magic in the Vieux Carré.

Loopholes to death!

She was the _embodiment_ of a loophole.

Dying was easy. Lingering as a ghost, she had not felt time passing, though she watched it do just that, without her.

It was clawing her way back to life that was hard. And part of her hadn't wanted to.

Mommy was there. Since she was twelve years old all she had wanted was to have her mom back… She had never really left. It was one thing to be told by condescending older witches that the spirit of her ancestors lingered, quite another to take long walks through the bayou with her _mom_ , talking about Granny's eccentricities and Dad trying the best he could to understand a teenage girl, talking about magic and how glad she was she had a true friend in Chantal and even Poppy. They watched her boyfriend Drew get over her with another girl, and her mom was there, the way every girl was entitled to have her mother's love and support when she realised the boy she liked had moved on.

Coming back to life sounded easy. And after she had achieved it, she had little memory of the struggle. It was an almost vertical uphill struggle, through molasses in a raging storm, blind, with weights bound to her extremities, endless, unendurable, unable to breathe or hear, nothing but her sense of self and a determination she herself was awed by.

Mommy had pushed her, with a twinkling smile and a promise, of her love, of her continued presence, of her pride in her.

Slogging her way back to life.

* * *

It was a conflicting sense of heaviness and of _vitality_ that made her sigh and stretch her fingers and toes. The smell of must, of fresh mortar and incense, of dying flowers and the heavy air thick with moisture and the scent of death, of the bayou. The hum of night insects and the scurry of rats in the dark recesses of the cemetery. The whisper and sigh of the breeze through the trees, tinkling offerings against candles, the delicate chimes of dream-catchers and night-song of birds, the hooting of hunting owls. She _felt_ everything. Magic shimmered in her veins like lava, exquisite, intoxicating, she lay smiling dazedly in the dark, moonlight glittering through cracks between the bricks, drunk on the feeling of magic, of connection, and she sighed and writhed with delicious contentment.

Her eyes widening, sharpening with focus, she stared at the ceiling of her little crypt, silver with fat cobwebs. She was back. And she felt _whole_. _Magic_ …

Whole, and hungry, and breathless, agitated.

The natural humidity of New Orleans pressed against her chest, unused to feeling the atmosphere. For months, she had been a ghost, disconnected, weightless, disembodied. Gravity had had no pull no her. Now gravity and humidity pushed against her, tightening a fist around her lungs, re-learning how heavy her body was. She needed air. Fresh air would help. She was bricked in. Taking a breath, she gently blew it out, turning the redbrick and mortar to sand. The breeze was feeble but welcome, and she rolled over, shimmying out of her tomb, dangling several feet from the ground, her legs unbearably heavy. With an _oof_ she dropped to the warm stone; her family's mausoleum was built of granite with a pinkish-grey hue, and the warmth and scents hit her like a battering ram.

Flowers, slowly dying, smoking sticks of incense and candles, she was surprised to see some of Granny's organic, funky bath-bombs dissolved into a bowl of rose-petals and floating-candles, with laminated photographs, a handmade stuffed-animal, an unwrapped deck of _Cards Against Humanity_ cards, cans of _Tuf-Skin_ spray, an un-popped packet of butter-popcorn, a bottle of 'Fierce No Fear' _Essie_ nail-polish, a sunflower-yellow primrose plant, a District Donuts takeout-box, a pink grapefruit, a pipe, a dandelion, a sanitary pad, a _Tootsie-Pop_ , bottle-caps, a cigarette, fortune-cookies, a hula-hoop, a tube of mascara, _Monopoly_ money, a few tiles from a _Bananagram_ set, a black Santa, packs of gum, a toy dinosaur, testimonials and bad poetry on Post-Its taking the piss – her friends who remembered she should be coming _back_ had continued to make pilgrimages to her. Jake had come to sit here for hours on end, doing his homework and chatting to her as if he had forgotten she was dead; Chantal and her sister came three times a week to jog around the cemetery and surrounding bayou and try out Granny's new face-mask recipes and sit and chat by her gravesite and make her feel included on their tradition; the ground was still marked where they summoned her in séance rituals, able to talk with her, even if she was bound within that circle.

Loopholes. Being friends mostly with witches outside of her own coven had given her a distinct advantage when it came to remaining connected to her own life while Davina prolonged her death.

She smiled fondly at the trinkets and mementos left at her gravesite. The candles still flickered, the flowers were only a few days old; her friends still missed her, as much as she missed them. The things left at her gravesite were left by _true_ friends, hinted at inside-jokes and ongoing friendly feuds, as a reminder for when she got back. That she wasn't forgotten. She reached down, and smiled as she unwrapped the pack of apple-pie gum, popping a stick in her mouth and eyeing the tube of vivid tangerine hair-dye and box of bright, pretty macarons and a joint it had been propped against. _Poppy_.

No-one had left her any shoes, though; she was barefoot, and still wearing the sleeveless ivory dress she had died in, with a low V-neckline, simple and classic and elegant, ruined by the dark crimson of her own blood. She raised a hand to her throat, letting out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding; the skin there was smooth, unmarked. She didn't want to have to live in turtlenecks or choker-necklaces for the rest of her life.

It was a typical late-summer night, cooler than any other time of year as they slipped seamlessly into autumn, especially in a city of the dead where the stone of hundreds of family-crypts absorbed the chill. People still made pilgrimages to the cemetery, though, and as she chewed her gum and wandered through the cemetery, she picked up little bits and pieces among the offerings left to other ancestors. Things she could use – alstromeria buds, ash, a crystal, a small copper bell. She picked her way through the cemetery, to the crypt her coven predominantly used, the open gates casting a flickering golden glow against the grey stone, warm and inviting. Beguiling. Candles made the sultry air unbearable, and she glanced up, unafraid, as Elijah Mikaelson sidled closer, intent on the candlelit mausoleum.

An Original.

She had only ever read about them in old grimoires.

But they were very real, and she had been watching with the other witches as _Klaus_ bullied his brother and sister, taking no responsibility for his treatment that had provoked such drastic actions, excusing away his abuse of them over a thousand years by their father's bullying of him during one human lifetime. She wondered why the noble Elijah, who cared so deeply about his family, had stood by and allowed his brother's behaviour to continue, especially when it affected their family so deeply.

Elijah was impeccable, and exactly what she would have envisioned the oldest vampire in the world to act like; calm, terrifying, with his own code of behaviour that he never veered from.

She liked the sister. Rebekah was beautiful and flawed, hopeful and bullied, fierce and feminine, clever and educated and strong. But she had allied with Marcel, who was allied with Davina, and for Marcel's sake she was sure Rebekah would be angry at what she was going to do next.

There were only two witches left to die before all four Harvest girls were resurrected. Genevieve and the snake in the mausoleum. Céleste.

* * *

"Hello, Céleste."

"How is this possible?" Her accent had returned, as soon as she had resumed her own body. The face that haunted his nightmares.

"Monique Devereaux and I had a little wager regarding your ability to keep a promise," Elijah said calmly. In another's body he could easily dissociate Sabine from Céleste. From the knowledge she had inhabited dozens of other witches over the last two centuries, forging the Vieux Carré coven as it was today through manipulation, inhabiting and killing off any who might have realised, who might have stood against her, using his family and her own friends to kill any who stood against her. But now, her flesh plump and warm, her dark eyes imploring, her familiar curling hair and mocha skin…his Céleste. The architect of his family's recent unhappiness. "It appears I have won."

She took steps back as he approached so calmly. "You were consumed with my downfall…you lost the trust of one of your own."

"Non!" Céleste whimpered.

"Please, don't," a voice said behind him, very gently. Elijah paused, surprised, and glanced over his shoulder with an inquiring half-smile. Half in moonlight, half bathed in the glow of the candles, shadows flickering eerily over her, a spectre made the fine hairs at the back of his neck prickle up. An incredibly pretty teenage girl, in a blood-splattered satin dress, her bare toes and the hem of her dress grubby, her fingers cradling odd trinkets, her waist-length blood-soaked blonde locks whispering around her face, dawdled inside the crypt.

He recognised her from Sophie's failed ritual. One of the four girls, fresh young lives cut short by coven tradition and Marcel's interference. She had looked the eldest of the four, the only blonde, and beautiful even in death. He remembered thinking how wasteful they were. But the Harvest was never about waste. Those four girls should have risen. One by one, they had.

And now another had re-joined the living. A Harvest girl.

Marcel and Rebekah must have taken either Bastianna or Genevieve out. Or both – Marcel had taken Davina's body, intent on taking her with them as they fled Niklaus, using her magic to protect them. Had they been successful, had Davina risen?

Regardless, one Harvest girl stood before him, beautiful and macabre, the scent of warm skin and natural flower oils and old blood and, incongruously, apple-pie, stirring on the humid air that gave him no discomfort. In death, he had noticed her prettiness. In life, she was lustrous. Incredible hazel eyes that flickered gold and emerald in the candlelight, plump lips, freckles like constellations over her pretty nose, pale-taupe eyebrows that gave her a queenly look, short thick blonde lashes with tips that glinted gold in the candlelight, her beauty was _mature_. She was tall, with a supple hourglass figure, pretty, full breasts, elegant hips and a curved bottom shown off by her timeless bias-cut dress.

A young woman stood before him, not a girl.

And she stopped him with a look. There was no magic in it, no impulse he could not fight off, nor did she glare; she merely flicked her eyes at him. This was witch-business. No matter his quiet, white-hot rage, he knew no punishment he could inflict on his enemy could ever surpass that of one of her own. Witches dealt with traitors far more brutally than their enemies.

He gave her a measuring look, fresh from the crypt, exhausted-looking and young, her eyes fixed on Céleste. The two young-looking women were illuminated golden and amber by hundreds of candles, disconcerting shadows flickering over them as the breeze stirred like a sigh through the cemetery. The one was young, covered in blood, ragged and exhausted, her hair a mess; the other was old, flawless as the day she was born, plump and flushed with life. One was calm; the other, panicked. For the first time in two centuries she had been outmanoeuvred.

" _S'il vous plaît_!" Céleste whimpered, imploring. The Harvest girl was a head taller, moving slowly – leonine, _queenly_. Her movements were laboured – coming back from the dead was an exhausting experience, he knew. And then Elijah felt it. Power. _Magic_. This was not flashy magic, was not meant for show. It was silent and unforgiving, it was the balance his mother had once spoken of, it was a servant of Nature performing ancient rites. He felt the tug of power, of magic, like the kiss of a long-lost lover, like the bayou cemetery was holding its breath, and his eyes flickered to Céleste cowering in the candlelight. " _Non_! _S'il vous plait_!"

" _Le voleur de l'âme_ ," said the younger girl, in imperfect French she obviously wasn't familiar with, her Louisiana accent low and rich. Her voice was warm and sultry like the air around them, and in the four words he detected a threat more spine-tingling than any of Klaus' raving tantrums.

 _The soul thief_.

"I can 'elp you!" Céleste whimpered, wide-eyed.

The girl held out her hand, as Céleste backed away, scrabbling against the wall and whimpering, her eyes bright with tears. The sharp slap of flesh against flesh surprised him, the girl opening her hand palm-out to Céleste, who had dived to place her hand in it, palm-up, as if she had no control of her own body.

Céleste had tried to jump into another body. The alarmingly zealous Monique had been convinced to help Elijah interfere with her spell; and now here she stood. Céleste. A woman he had loved, had continued to love after her death two centuries ago, mourned, remembered as a cautionary tale any time he caught himself looking at another woman, hoping… Returned to her own body, the very place she should have been all along. All the lives she had stolen, everything she had done to try and undo his family; here they were.

He watched the Harvest girl, wondering. Stealing lives. Destroying souls for her own gain. _The soul thief_. He wondered very much how the Ancestors viewed her abuse of their magic, her manipulation of the coven and hijacking of the Harvest ritual's magic.

He did not need to wonder; an offering returned to life after her sacrifice held Céleste's life literally in her hands. Céleste's wrist gripped in her elegant hand, the girl held up a smoky quartz, striated with threads of copper, Céleste's eyes widening, filling with tears, a whimper bubbling from her lips as she squirmed, writhing, her eyes fixated on the crystal as the girl set it with surprising tenderness on Céleste's palm. In her other hand, she crushed the buds of alstromaeria flowers with ash to a fragrant, gritty paste. The girl reached out, swiping her thumb across Céleste's brow, leaving a smear of the paste there, before pressing her entire palm to Céleste's breastbone.

The Harvest girl parted her lips, letting out a gentle sigh that froze the look of terror on Céleste's face, the sigh became like a breeze through Spanish moss, skittering over dried leaves in autumn, rushing from the sea, and the hundreds of flames guttered and spit around him as he watched. The sacrifice and the thief, one tall, statuesque in her bloodied dress, the remnants of her own sacrifice staining her skin, her hand loosely clasping Céleste's wrist as a violinist would lovingly embrace their bow, Céleste cowering before her.

Not only cowering. The young witch was destroying her. The sigh of her magic concealed the high-pitched scream of agony as Céleste slowly died, crumbling from the inside out, aging before his very eyes, from plump and beautiful to something like a living corpse, shrivelled and brittle skin stretched taut over disintegrating bones, her eyes still shining brightly, locked onto the quartz in her own palm. Her body was disintegrating into dust, skin and sinew, muscle and bone, marrow and organs, drawn to the crystal now resting on the straw-strewn dusty ground at the Harvest girl's feet.

Elijah had not breathed since the Harvest girl had taken Céleste's wrist in her hand. The sharp, decisive _crack_ of the now oil-black crystal shattering into a dozen pieces surprised a gasp from him. He had watched his old lover disintegrate before his very eyes, drawn body, mind and soul into the crystal now blackened by magic and destroyed. He breathed, in, out, shocked.

The subtlest magic was always the most powerful. Mother's spell to turn them into vampires had been seamless, understated, impossible to recreate. Any witch who glimpsed her grimoire sighed over how exquisite her spells were, the attention to every detail, the complexity.

Céleste's execution had been subtle, ancient magic, exquisite, and terrifying.

The Harvest girl sighed, the sound choked, and he saw her lower-lip tremble as her shoulders droop a little.

She took no pleasure in executing one of her own. But it was necessary.

This single act set a precedent. She was not a child to be told what to do; nor was she willing to overlook betrayal from one in her own coven.

She looked young, then, for the first time. Young, exhausted and upset. Second-guessing herself. Elijah gazed upon her, and remembered a quote from Karl Kraus; " _A weak man has doubts before a decision. A strong man has them afterwards_ ". The girl let out a breath, a normal, non-magical sigh that sounded as tired as she looked. She turned to him, her eyes guarded.

"You needn't have killed one of your own."

"You couldn't have destroyed her as completely as I did," the girl mumbled unhappily. Elijah gazed at her. She was ruthless – and remorseful.

"What did you do to her?" he asked.

"Erased her, utterly," she sighed heavily, her lips downturned, miserable. "There's no trace of her left, no ghost bound with the others, no magic, nothing to recall – except in your memory, of course. And no-one can animate memories into reality… Does it always feel like this?"

"When it stops feeling as it does is when you should worry," Elijah said quietly. For all he knew the supernatural world was a place in which the strongest and wiliest survived, he would not wish his life on anyone. He would not wish a teenager to forget to feel sorrow at ending a life, to cease being troubled by the necessity of an execution to protect her people. She let out a short breath, stooping to delicately pick the pieces of quartz from the ground. They clinked delicately in her palm. She straightened up slowly, and gazed at Elijah, her palms pressed together. She hummed gently, then opened her eyes.

"May I have your hand?" she asked quietly, and he eyed her guardedly. She gave him a grim smile, as if she realised he would always associate her with what he had seen, and be cautious of her because of it, but he offered his palm. Barely touching his fingertips, she steadied his hand.

Into his palm, she placed an exquisite miniature bust, reformed from the quartz, carved by magic. Céleste's exact likeness, in miniature.

She raised her eyes to his. The candlelight picked out shards of gold amid the emerald and jade and moss-green hues in her irises, a delicate ring of cinnamon and chestnut surrounding them. Incredibly pretty hazel. A human could never see colour the way a vampire did – it was times like this he enjoyed his supernatural senses.

Quietly, she said, "This is what happens when you let your family get away with treating people the way you do." Elijah stared, the weight of the tiny bust in his hand negligible, the gut-shot apt and painful despite how gently she had delivered the reprimand. She gazed at him, and a smile warmed her features, made her look ten years younger, almost bashful, like she was embarrassed to speak out of turn. "I'm very glad you're breaking the habit. Lead by example. Lead from the front."

He thought of Hayley and the baby, and he smiled. He did not want the next millennium – the next _century_ – to continue the same destructive pattern they had entrenched themselves in. The baby was a brand-new start; and he intended to make certain Niklaus knew his behaviour would no longer be tolerated. It was one thing to take down their enemies – enemies of their own making, enemies centuries in the making – but to inflict himself on his own family, and letting him… Elijah's tolerance had reached its breaking-point.

For the baby's sake he would ensure Niklaus either earned his redemption on his own or was removed utterly from the equation. If he had to muscle his brother out of its life to ensure the child's safety and happiness, he would. He would not allow his niece or nephew to grow up learning that the way Niklaus treated others, especially his own family, was acceptable, forgivable. Normal. Elijah was the child's uncle. Hayley had already asked him to stand in as godfather, a quaint and now rather outdated Christian tradition he had never had any interest in. No harm would come to that child. It was Elijah's responsibility to ensure the child's safety and happiness.

Always and forever.

The vicious cycle of Niklaus' tyranny and their acceptance of his behaviour ended now. It ended tonight.

And he could imagine how Niklaus, in his rage, cared to end it.

"I wish to protect my niece. Or nephew," he smiled, excited by the very idea of cradling that new life in his arms. A child. Theirs. Their great shining light after endless darkness. The girl's smile was pretty and shy and earnest.

"I am sorry my coven used Hayley and the baby. But I'm not sorry it brought you into their lives," she said, smiling warmly. "The baby's lucky to have you. You seem like one of the good ones."

"And how would you know that?"

"I've been watching," she blushed. "Not in a creepy way… I suppose it is creepy any way you look at it. There's not much to do… Your sister is here."

"She isn't." His heart stopped for an instant. She gave him a sorrowful look, nodding. He let out a breath, closing his eyes, disbelieving. How could she? Trapped inside this cemetery with him.

"And your brother… He's on his way. With a stake. It's…powerful."

"Mother's white oak stake," Elijah sighed, closing his eyes, envisioning the hefty stake whittled by a Salvatore, confiscated by his mother, bound to a spelled ring that protected the human wearer from death by the supernatural. Mother had bound the ring's magic to the destructive power of the white oak, the sole weapon left on this earth that could destroy an Original vampire. Turned the white oak into an immortal weapon. He sighed heavily.

"You know your sister better than anyone," the girl said, and Elijah glanced carefully at her. "Do you think she wanted your father to kill Klaus?" Elijah stared at her a moment, wondering just how much she knew… They were and had been each other's one pure solace for centuries now. For the last century, Niklaus had taken Rebekah away from him. Rebekah had come to New Orleans in search of him, anxious for his safety. In fearing their love of each other would eclipse their love of him, that was exactly what had happened.

Just as it had with Rebekah and Marcellus. Rebekah and Elijah had drawn together, coping with him, with each other. Rebekah and Marcellus had something else altogether; he was her escape from this family. Her hope for a brighter, less complicated future. A life for herself, without her brothers ruining it. Did he believe Rebekah wished their brother dead? Destroyed as utterly and irrevocably as Céleste had been?

"No," he said firmly. Rebekah had many faults, as did they all, but when it came to their survival, she fought fiercest to protect them all. Including Niklaus. Especially from their father. He eyed the girl, a teenaged girl sacrificed in a blood ritual and raised from the dead after a year as a ghost, watching… "What did you see?"

"Enough that matters," she shrugged delicately. "You deserve better. So does she. The only thing you've ever been ensured of for a thousand years is each other's endurance. You're the only ones he could never kill. I won't let him tonight, either, if you'd like."

His grim dread gave way to amusement at her shy offer to stop his unstoppable brother from murdering their little sister. His Rebekah. His fierce delight, his lonely-hearted sister who had made all the wrong choices. But after a thousand years, well…it wasn't any surprise her judgement was warped. They all had their faults, their issues. He sighed.

"I would very much like to prevent that," he said earnestly, eyeing the miniature bust in his palm. Céleste's likeness, carved in quartz, the only thing now that remained of her, but his memories of a sweeter time, a life he had almost forgotten.

He had wondered for decades how Mikael had tracked them down, after all his efforts to conceal their family in the bayou city so far removed from the grandeur they had enjoyed in Europe. Foolish Rebekah… And now Niklaus had the opportunity to do what he has always done, to turn Rebekah's joy to ash, to warp her memories of Marcel as surely as recent experience had tainted his own memories of Céleste. "It is a Dark Object… Do you think you can override its power?"

"All magic can be disrupted," she said quietly, stooping to lift a candle, extracting a bottle from a hidden nook, and showing a good eyeful of cleavage as her dress tugged at her knees and hips, the fabric riding lower. She shot her beautiful breasts a glower and tugged at the blood-stained fabric, giving up as she stood, raising her hand to the rafters where a dove flapped its wings but swooped down after circling the ceiling, nestling in her palm, cooing. She gave Elijah a dubious, sad-eyed look, murmured something in the language of the witches, and wrung the bird's neck. She let out a horrified, steadying gasp, closing her eyes, but took a small knife from the uneven wall and split the bird open, revealing its innards. Into a wooden bowl, she mixed its guts with different ingredients lying about in the crypt, and she shot him a shy look from under her lashes.

"What is it you need?" he asked, smiling. He knew what she needed; but she had to be able to ask him to give her something he would readily give to protect his sister.

"The quartz. And your blood," she said, licking her lips. He offered his hand, for the second time, and she gave him a sweetly apologetic look as she pricked his fingertip with a needle, squeezing a single drop of his blood into the mixture. A potion. She thanked him, he licked his finger and watched as she closed her eyes and hummed low, the breeze rustling the trees and offerings of the witches to their ancestors at tombstones all over the cemetery. She dipped the quartz bust of Céleste into the mixture, setting it carefully on a ledge where the potion seeped from it, murmuring under her breath. She lifted the basin and offered it to Elijah.

"I'll need you to pour some of this at every entrance," she said, her voice that lulling Louisiana drawl he had always liked. The accent was the memory of lazy, sultry afternoons, of julep and white dresses, long candlelit evenings, of cicadas and ballrooms alive with laughter and dancing, of lazing in bed with a beautiful woman, of learning new sonatas on his violin, of a world long eclipsed. "You'll do it much more quickly than I could." He chuckled softly, and nodded.

Ruthless enough to execute a betrayer; compassionate enough to prevent his brother murdering their sister. A balance; the shyness from her youth and the strength from her experience were refreshing. He thought of another girl he had thought guided by compassion, and his heart seized with scorn, remembering his brother Kol's grin at his most light-hearted. He hid a frown, and took the dish from her.

"Should I return to you after I have shared out the potion?" he asked.

"No. I'll finish the spell from here once the potion has been absorbed into the earth," she said quietly. "Find your sister. I'll be gone by the time your brother gets here."

"I should like to know your name," Elijah said quietly, at the gates. She licked her lips.

"Anise Lavalière," she said, and Elijah smiled. A beautiful name. Unusual, for this part of the States. After the star-anise. She pronounced it "a-niece" rather than the harsh "a-niss". Very pretty; unconventional. He would expect nothing less from a New Orleans Lavalière witch. They had always done things a little differently.

He smiled. "Welcome back, Anise Lavalière."

* * *

 **A.N.** : So… Terrifying? Surprising? Are you curious what happens next? I didn't anticipate having Anise execute Céleste, but it makes sense – and it sets a precedent that Anise isn't a Mary-Sue who doesn't deal in death despite being an integral part of a supernatural community where survival of the fittest is the law of the land. Also adding some layers to the Original relationships; I was having a discussion with _amisam47_ about specific _undertones_ in the sibling dynamics.


	3. The Mikaelson Family Values

**A.N.** : Another chappie for you! I had a rubbish day at work; please send some positivity my way!

* * *

 _Eternity in an Hour_

 _03_

 _The Mikaelson Family Values_

* * *

"Do whatever it takes, just _stay alive_ ," he said fervently. "I promise, I'll get you out of there."

" _I've never seen him like this before_ ," Rebekah said, her voice crackly over the spotty bayou reception. " _He's out of his mind with rage, up all night howling one obscenity-laced tirade after the next… He's gonna kill me_."

"Come on, Rebekah, we both know he's had tantrums before – only difference is, this time he's locked up where he can't leave a trail of bodies," Marcel said. "Remember when I was ten? He and Kol ripped through the city on a bender just 'cuz Elijah was giving me lessons… You always forget how bad they are 'til he has another one. Just stay as far away from him as you can."

" _That's a brilliant strategy_ ," Rebekah quipped, with her usual tartness. " _But, given that the dead bitch Céleste has trapped us in here 'til moonrise, my options are somewhat limited_."

"You're not in there alone, Bekah," Marcel said plaintively. "Elijah's with you, he won't let Klaus hurt you."

"He'll get himself killed in the process, which would hurt me far more than my own death," Rebekah said gently.

"Listen, I'm not leaving you in there," Marcel said fiercely. He frowned. "When'd Céleste get killed?"

" _A few hours ago, Elijah was there; one of the Harvest girls named Anise Lavalière executed her. Lavalière's a name that brings back a lot of memories…_ "

"I'll say," Marcel chuckled despite himself. He knew the Lavalière family. Good people. Eccentric, but great-hearted, strong. Uncompromising when it came to their values.

" _Elijah said it was gorgeous magic, very old-school terrifying. Like something Mother would have done_ ," Rebekah said, with a hint of wistfulness and sorrow in her voice. She didn't have to say it, but a thousand years without her and a couple of assassination-attempts from her, she still missed the mother she remembered from her human life. " _You texted and said Davina had woken, why are you surprised_?"

"Just wondered if maybe T had gotten to Genevieve," Marcel sighed.

" _No. Céleste_ _hijacked the Harvest magic; she was one of the four witches we need to kill. I suppose the other girl woke when you beheaded Bastianna. Genevieve will be the last to die. If I ever get out of this godsforsaken cemetery_."

"Look, Davina will find a loophole, get you out early. Then we can all go together," Marcel promised her. "If Klaus comes after us, we take him on one hell of a ride."

" _I lived for centuries looking over my shoulder, ready to run at a moment's notice. Am I to go back to that_?" Rebekah asked sorrowfully.

"Worry about that later," Marcel said. "Right now, just buy me some time. I promise you, I'll get you out of there." He hung up, wondering how long Rebekah's cell battery would last – how long _she_ would last against her psychotic brother. He made his way up to the attic, delivering the breakfast takeout he had ordered for Davina. Her first resurrection meal, and her favourite. She sat, smaller than he remembered, curled up on the bed, tears streaming silently down her face. He murmured a gentle, coaxing, "Hey, D" but she didn't look up. After she had woken from the dead, she had slept for a little, lulled by him, he liked to think, safe and relaxed in his presence. That felt damn good, that she still trusted him, that he was still her hero.

"How do you feel?" he asked gently, setting the bag of food down on the bed. "There's donuts in there. Got you some stuff, too. Organic soap and scented candles, that jasmine incense you like, some of those artists' pens you were itching to try. Figured you wouldn't mind coming back here, someplace you know…there's been some…things that've happened we gotta talk about… Davina?"

A wash of tears stained her face, her wan skin and chapped lips; she hugged her knees to her chest, her lip quivering, her hands shaking, knuckles white as she clutched at the fabric of her dress. "So, another of the Harvest girls is awake, too. Anise Lavalière, Rebekah says her name is. D'you know her?" Davina finally responded, gasping a breath, tears spilling uncontrollably down her cheeks. She shook her head.

"N-no," she whispered hoarsely. "Sh-she's older than m-me… She hangs out w-with w-witches from other covens."

"Sounds like a Lavalière," Marcel smiled, remembering significant witches in his life who had come from that family. Clever, creative and eccentric, with an old-school elegance and charm. They did things on their own terms. Great diplomats, funky inventors, sharp businesswomen, gorgeous, talented, brave men who stood up for what they believed in. He remembered crying at Posy Lavalière's funeral – and she had married into that family, she didn't even have the excuse of genetic inclination toward eccentricity.

He perched on the bed beside Davina, trying to draw her into his arms, to unfold, let him comfort her. He had carried her to her death, grief-stricken but accepting that she would return. Davina hadn't, for weeks. And he'd been spiralling ever since. "Come on, D," he coaxed gently. "Gimme a hug. Tell me what's going on… Three out of the four of you sacrificed in the Harvest ritual have come back. First it was your friend, Monique, then Anise Lavalière, now you. Monique's been sayin' the Ancestors were with her while she was…y'know, dead – talkin' to them, teachin' 'em. Was it like that with you?"

Davina let out a choked sigh, shaking her head so her dank brunette hair swayed in curtains around her face, more tears leaking. "There was nothing. It was cold. Empty and dark. And it went on forever."

Marcel sighed softly. "It's over now, honey," he assured her, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. More tears spilled. She choked on them, sniffling, and turned huge brown bloodshot eyes on him.

"I can't feel it!" she blurted, shuddering a breath as more tears spilled.

"Feel what, honey?"

"M-my magic. It's _gone_ ," she choked a whisper, sniffling. "I can't f-feel it anymore." Thoughts of Rebekah disappeared; she could handle herself. And Elijah was there with her and their psychotic brother, the monster who had raised him. He truly would be made in Klaus' own image if he ignored this child's pain and confusion, got blustery and angry that Davina was 'useless' now that she couldn't do anything to help Rebekah. He'd been looking out for Davina since before Rebekah had sauntered back into his life; and long after Davina was dead for real, after a long and full life, Rebekah would continue to twist him in knots. For that split second, he didn't care about Rebekah's life being threatened because of what they had done a couple lifetimes ago. He cared that something was very wrong with his friend, the kid he had been protecting, bonded with, loved.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know – I can't _feel it_!" Davina whimpered angrily in frustration, choking on her tears.

"Maybe it's your body getting used to only having your own power again," Marcel murmured, drawing Davina in close as she hiccoughed. "You know, you were a nuclear power-station for a long time there. It's gonna take a while to get used to needing to charge up the battery every night."

"That's not it," Davina whispered, sniffling. "I don't have any powers, Marcel. I can't feel it anymore. I can't _feel_ anything."

"When you described being connected to everything… That's gone?" Marcel asked, and Davina whimpered, sniffling, and burst into tears. He tucked her against him, holding her close, while she bawled. The rumblings through the Quarter, her death, coming back to life, this new lack of connection to her magic, to Nature, it had to have gotten to her.

"It feels like I'm still dead," she whispered, dissolving into tears again. Marcel's heart seized, he held his breath.

"You're not," he said fervently. "You're not dead, Davina. Not for a very long time."

"I've lost my powers… The Ancestors…they punished me. They stripped me of my magic," Davina hiccoughed.

"They're dead – how can they do that?" Marcel asked. Witches were an enigma to him, still, after centuries of life at the top of the supernatural food-chain. Their skills and knowledge were fiercely guarded, passed down through the generations, no outsider could ever hope to understand magic if they were not innate witches themselves.

"I don't know!" Davina wailed.

Marcel sighed, and tucked Davina close. Thoughts of Rebekah's early-release dwindled, but he knew Elijah had gotten his siblings out of way tougher spots than this. Elijah was different from what he remembered – no longer indulgent, and less forgiving. Still fair, with that inimitable aura of elegant malice and a moral code warped by growing up in medieval times and fighting in the supernatural world for centuries. Elijah had evolved with the world around him, but fundamentally he was still influenced by his first, human, brutal life. He was still charming and timeless and elegant, but he no longer…pulled punches, let Klaus get away with doing whatever the hell he wanted.

Discovering the werewolf girl Hayley's pregnancy had triggered something in him. Elijah was determined not to let Klaus get in the way – of his ambition, of his desire to build something his niece or nephew could be a part of, could be proud of. He was no longer determined to sacrifice everything for one petulant, abusive sibling. He no longer went out of his way to forgive Klaus' volatile tantrums, or pretend to have forgotten the thousand years of abuse and manipulation and emotional conditioning Klaus had imposed on them all – Marcel included.

This Elijah was the man Marcel remembered from his lessons. Patient and ruthless, kind, deadly, talented and musical and clever, calm, compassionate, diplomatic, fierce, and a man who had the potential to be a _leader_. Elijah didn't care about power; he cared about his family. He cared about that baby.

He'd heard whisperings, more than rumour. The city had imploded. The chain of events triggered by his interference in the Harvest ritual had finally had lasting repercussions on his own community. Klaus stealing the crown from him wasn't what had finally toppled the empire he had built. Being ousted as the second – third, counting Elijah – in command to Klaus wasn't what triggered it. He'd told his men to kiss the ring and bide their time, Klaus would get bored. But Marcel had built his community as an extended _family_ – and none of his family were going to follow a monster who murmured his own sister during a temper-tantrum.

His friends were dividing the city between them, anarchy as they fought for territory and power, strong-armed alliances – or simply left. Some had finally reached their breaking-point, like Elijah. Klaus as king with Marcel as his _adviser_ was one thing, a tough pill to swallow but one they had to for their own survival, to continue to enjoy the lives they had carved for themselves out of the city's very foundations. But if Klaus found nothing wrong in hunting down his sister intent on murdering her, was there anything he held sacred?

The only people who would follow a monster like that were the bloodthirsty, ignorant types – and Marcel had always made a point not to invite anyone like that into his family.

What he and Rebekah had done in 1919 was no worse than what Kol had been attempting just half a decade before. They had daggered the unpredictable youngest brother on the grand staircase at the Christmas ball in 1914, Marcel had been so _smug_ in helping Klaus ensnare Kol's two pretty witch-friends in that creepy old house. He still had the diamond, big as a baseball, stashed in his safe, even Klaus hadn't found that yet. And Marcel had wondered about showing it to Davina, back when he'd asked her to find a way to kill an Original. Elijah had never been the problem; and Marcel would always have a complicated history with Rebekah.

Should he have given Davina the diamond, told her what Rebekah had whispered to him about what Kol had been planning? A dagger that could put Klaus down, the way he had put Rebekah down for fifty-two years, like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White – only the handsome prince was a slave and he was too frightened to fight through the magical forest of thorns to rescue her; he'd taken the evil witch's gift instead.

A dagger that could desiccate Klaus like death. Could it be done? Papa Tunde's blade was something else, he'd felt its effects first-hand and Cami had stopped the witch from killing him, but it was worse than what Klaus had done to his siblings over the centuries. Kol had wanted to pay him back in kind… Should Marcel have helped him?

Helped the monster who compelled innocent people to enact _Hamlet_ in front of him, terrified, unable to look away, Kol's vampire-blood seeping through his body like a drug?

He had never liked Kol – in his mind, Kol was forever associated with his first taste of true terror, the first glimpse into the true life of the Originals beyond Rebekah's shining wheat-gold hair and pretty gowns, Elijah's concertos and Klaus' horses and endless carousel of pretty women, the groaning dining-table, the immaculate manners, the little luxuries and careless opulence. The security of wealth, concealing the truth.

Marcel couldn't pinpoint exactly when he had decided he wanted to be turned. Even to this day, he couldn't remember.

And he had learned too late that there was a cost to being in the Original family, even once-removed as the adopted slave-boy turned surrogate-son, favourite plaything, chosen target, a mirror-image intended to flatter his _father_.

He had made a deal with the devil, without even realising it. But then, as a slave-boy he'd never gone to church; how was he supposed to know what the devil looked like? A wealthy European landowner with a vivacious sister and an elegant, patient older-brother, none of whom had looked at or treated him like he was anything but their equal.

Pets were cuter when they were little, though. He'd grown up far too quickly for Klaus' taste, and they had all butted heads. He rebelled against Klaus, sought Elijah's approval, hoped to earn Rebekah's forgiveness for choosing immortality over her.

He had known she would always be in his life, regardless of what he chose. And he knew that, still.

No matter how angry he was, Klaus could never kill his sister.

* * *

"Are you really going to stand against me? And not with that pathetic _blade_ , you just have to pull it out some day," Klaus crowed, eyeing him disdainfully, smug in his assessment of Elijah's choices. The only paths he had forwards. One or the other, the stake or the blade. Klaus or Rebekah.

Elijah had no intention of losing either. If one or the other had to suffer temporary discomfort to teach a lesson, so be it. Truth be told, he was wholly set on his siblings learning the new order of things.

In a moment of foolishness and forgetfulness, a shining moment of _hope_ Rebekah had drawn Mikael the Destroyer to their home.

He could not blame Rebekah for calling their father to their city, the sanctuary they had built for themselves over centuries, all his meticulous efforts to conceal their whereabouts undone in a moment driven by fear and heartbreak and resentment. Rebekah had desired freedom – the freedom to indulge in her own whims and pay the consequences herself, not have every opportunity snatched from her – to love, to know peace, to grow. People grew from grief, and they grew from joy; he and Rebekah were both pieced together by fragments of broken hearts and shattered souls – a modern concept, the soul, rooted in Christianity and other such religions. As a devout pagan Elijah had had no concept, no education in _souls_ until they had fled Mikael to medieval Europe. But _soul_ fit perfectly, his concept of self and everything that made up who he was, distilled into one tiny, enormous word.

Until a few days ago – hours, really – he had thought back upon his time with Celeste and grieved the same way Rebekah grieved for her lost lovers, the ones Elijah had never stepped in and saved. Because she was his sister, and he adored her, and should have valued her happiness over placating his brother's volatile temper.

He had believed breaking Mother's spell binding his werewolf side dormant within him would release Klaus from…himself. His paranoia, his brutality, his manipulation – all skills he had acquired and finessed over the centuries. Murdering Mikael had only made Niklaus more himself than he had ever been – tyrannical, paranoid, vicious. To an extreme even Elijah marvelled at – and he had seen all Niklaus' worse tantrums.

Somewhere along the way, he could not say when it had started, Elijah had started enabling Niklaus' behaviour. Tiny things, little moments, had forged who Niklaus was, as much as any vicious war against their enemies. Little things, over centuries, had created the monster before him. Paranoid, vicious, self-loathing, and entrenched in the ways and behaviour of a world long eclipsed by something more elegant. Every time he bit his tongue and did not reprimand Niklaus his behaviour, tell his siblings that enough was enough, that they were vampires, they were not _monsters_ …

He remembered telling Rebekah that Esther had made them into vampires. She had not made them into monsters; they had done that to themselves.

They were each responsible for the greatest faults in each other. Niklaus' pathological need to be the centre of attention and in control; Rebekah's desperation to be loved, never forsaken; Elijah's ingrained sense of responsibility to set his own desires aside for others. For Niklaus. He had been conditioned to think of Niklaus first, always; just as Rebekah had been conditioned to fear the deaths of any lover she took, forever bound to the whims of a brother who brutalised her, and another who merely cuddled her as she wept after the fact, never stood in Niklaus' path protecting her.

No more.

Tiny moments had accumulated over centuries to create a warped version of his brother. A shell of his former self, unrecognisable as his brother. They had lost themselves a millennium ago. Elijah struggled to remember who he had been – struggled to remember his human life beyond the exhaustion and the slog of endless perseverance to fight against Nature and the Native clans and reap from the farm he and his family had built from nothing on land they had bought with blood.

One great event would shape the next millennium.

He was determined that after this night, Rebekah need never fear she did not have the freedom to make her own mistakes; Elijah…had resolved to consider himself more. There was unselfish, and there was giving so much that there was no self left to him. He dedicated himself to everyone _but_ himself.

Elijah had hoped the child would trigger a reaction in Niklaus, a change in his behaviour, his priorities. He had tried to be gentle. Now he accepted that brutality was the only language Niklaus understood – and Elijah would no longer pull his punches. He refused.

For that child, he was willing to do whatever it took to ensure its life was a healthy, happy one, full of joy, and potential. To live, and grow, to _be_ whoever they wished to be, to experience things without fear, to _love_. To live in a state of unfettered _joy_.

To grow up with an appreciation that people were not innately vicious, selfish, brutal, unforgiving, tyrannical. That people were what circumstance made them; he desired Hayley's child to grow up untainted by his family's cynicism.

And none of them was more cynical than Niklaus.

He saw the world as a reflection of himself. Small wonder he lashed out at it so viciously.

Elijah sighed and eyed his brother, meticulously cataloguing Niklaus' stance, determining every move he could make, a chess match neither of them could win.

"Then I'd hate you as I do her, no…if you want to protect Rebekah, you'll need to use the white-oak stake," Niklaus smirked. "Don't pretend you haven't thought about it."

Elijah tossed the stake aside, out of sight, exhaling softly. "Two years ago I held your heart in my hand, Niklaus. Rumours of our siblings being cast into the oceans where they could never be found, lovers taken by you to punish me, Rebekah's heart endlessly devastated by your cruelty, of course, Niklaus, I have considered it," he murmured, never looking away from his brother's eye. "But I am not so cowardly that I must kill you. Nor do I believe you are worth an immediate death. Your endless tormented existence is our revenge; and no longer shall I allow you to punish us for your own shortcomings, everything you loathe about yourself, everything you fear, everything you cannot acquire through manipulation or force – no longer shall I allow you to take from us our _joy_ , our love. Our family. Finn and Kol are gone. I shall never see my father again. Esther is gone. You will not destroy my sister."

"Well, she's always been your favourite, hasn't she?" Niklaus wheedled nastily. "Your _darling_ Rebekah. Yes, the two of you, cuddled away with your music and your bourbon and your secrets."

"Your greatest, constant champion has abandoned you. Your cruelty has pushed Rebekah away forever," Elijah said smugly. "Sometimes our sister acts without thinking. She's short of temper, quick to fall in love. And your ceaseless malice has broken her heart more times than I can count. Coaxing Mikael here was _centuries_ in the making – and of _your_ making, Niklaus. I do not blame her."

"I do."

"I would never kill you, Niklaus. Do not twist this my defence of our sister into an attack upon you, that you may nurture your rage and justify you cruelty toward us," Elijah warned quietly. "I do not wish you dead, however, if you must suffer that I may protect this family, brother…then so be it."

"You have shown your cards too early, brother. I knew you had always allied to conspire against me; and here it is, you show yourself to be complicit in Rebekah's machinations against me, conspiring my death," Klaus growled, his eyes bulging madly with his self-righteous, delusional anger.

"I do wish you could hear yourself, brother," Elijah sighed, tired of Niklaus' inability to _listen_ – to truly hear uncomfortable truths he rejected out of paranoia, self-loathing and loneliness – all self-imposed, he would add. "Rebekah alone has stood by your side for a millennium, despite everything you have inflicted upon her – you take delight in punishing us for our loyalty. Is it small wonder she decided to take action to prevent you doing so again? She wished for the freedom you constantly denied her – she _still_ wishes for her freedom. A life of her own. I will not allow you to overlook the fact you bartered her one opportunity for a _family_ , for love, because you were frightened of a little witch. Silas' cure was Rebekah's hope – you destroyed it. And for what – a human doppelgänger whose blood was ruined for use to turn hybrids!"

"I may not be able to _turn_ hybrids," Niklaus said silkily, dangerously, a smirk on his lips, "but I can create them."

"And after tonight do you believe Hayley would allow you to have the slightest involvement with her child?" Elijah asked tartly, and Niklaus' jaw bulged in a petulant glower. "Your vile schemes brought about the creation of that baby by accident; your continued behaviour denies you any chance of knowing your child. I will not step aside and allow you to ruin that baby the way you treat our sister. I will not see you destroy Hayley to get to the child."

"And there it is – the truth of all things. You would conspire with Rebekah to be rid of me. To take my city, my kingdom, to take my place by Hayley's side, have _my child_ call you _father_ –"

"Niklaus, you do not stand anywhere near Hayley's side, and her child shall call me Uncle," Elijah sighed, shaking his head. "Nor do I conspire against you. Mikael is dead. Here we are, in the city we love, a city you set to destroy the moment you saw another had built what you could never dream of. We are alive; Marcel is as good a man as I had always dared hope he might become; the city has been rebuilt; our family, which I had once feared would continue to be hunted, shall expand. The rest does not interest me. I do not condone our sister's drawing Mikael to us. But neither can I condemn her for it."

"I can," Niklaus smirked. "She betrayed us."

"Now you know how it feels," a voice said, and Elijah sighed at the intrusion. He knew she had been listening to every word, she was too well-trained to listen in should she need a head-start, and flee to safety until the danger passed. Rebekah evaded the storm; Elijah withstood it. They rebuilt what they could after the fact, together, and though they knew they grieved, were struck with inconsolable pain, neither mentioned it. It was mutual, accepted, ignored. Until now. Now a thousand years of abuse resurfaced; how dare Niklaus point the finger of betrayal when he had acted selfishly and with calculated cruelty toward them? Alexandre, Émile, Katerina, and Céleste – barely a handful of the lovers Niklaus had destroyed out of pure spite over the centuries. Elijah did not have many other lovers or friends he had allowed himself to become close to, in the knowledge Niklaus would engineer their destruction had he ever become threatened by their importance in his life; but Rebekah had. Her life was a rich tapestry woven of great joy – and crippling heartbreak, devastation. Great stretches of it were woven plain, where she had spent so much time daggered in a box at Klaus' whim.

He did not forget that Niklaus had lied about Esther's fate, binding them to a promise based on his treachery. He did not forgive that Niklaus denied Katerina her freedom, and his freedom to love her. He did not forget that Niklaus went out of his way to deny Rebekah her chance at true joy, when he gained nothing but a respite from torment for it. He had endured far worse than Silas over the centuries. Niklaus refused Rebekah her joy; and now he had fathered a child he had no wish to acknowledge, with a woman he sneered at and remained impassive about.

"Come to finish what you started a century ago?" Klaus quipped snidely. Rebekah stood, the silvery remnants of Alaric Saltzman's ring glinting in the moonlight, behind their brother, her features calm, almost gentle. But the threat was there in her hands, and Elijah held Papa Tunde's Dark blade, ready to sink it into Niklaus' chest should he make a move to remove the stake from Rebekah's hands.

"I started? _I_!" Rebekah's eyes flared with indignation. "You have twisted truths to suit your own ends for a thousand years, brother, but even you cannot rewrite history. _I_ did not systematically murder anyone who brought you a speck of joy in an _interminable_ lifetime of terror and isolation. It was not _I_ who callously destroyed everything his family ever built – everyone they adored."

"So you admit it - you invited Mikael to destroy me."

"Listen to yourself! You _drove_ me to betray you. And now you want to twist it and make it worse to justify killing me instead of accepting your own fault. All I did was love your friend. You could've been _happy_ for us," Rebekah said softly, almost tearful, but there was a bite, her innate stubbornness, foolish strength. "But instead, in your paranoia, you feared losing us both. And because of that, you did… There is no-one else to blame, Nik. Only you. And look. Look at you. Threatening our brother, his only insurance against your cruelty the blade forged by enemies who waited _centuries_ to exact their revenge on you. Celeste – the woman Elijah _loved_. You told the humans she had been sacrificing children to Satan. Papa Tunde – you butchered his sons, made certain their severed heads were the last thing he ever saw before you gouged out his eyes. You destroyed a _wonderful_ thing Marcel had built in our home, something we could never have dreamed of creating – and you knew that, and you were jealous, and you _ruined_ it." Tears of frustration glittered in Rebekah's eyes. "I hope you've realised by now, brother. He has already won. You tried to raise Marcellus in your image and he shines so brightly he casts you into shadow. And you punish Elijah, and keep him from taking anything for himself, because you know he could, too, with ease. And you resent and envy them for it. I don't know why you punish me for seeking joy, Niklaus. And I refused to let Marcel pay the price for our happiness."

"It was your cruelty that led Rebekah to do what she did," Elijah said quietly, glancing past Niklaus to their sister, hair glimmering in the moonlight. He had seen the same expression on her face a thousand times – more. Grief and frustration and devastation and loneliness and rage and betrayal, all mixed together in a torrent she had no way of shirking, or avoiding; they had both learned to endure the pain, with no hope of fighting or deflecting it, no opportunity to unleash it, make it right, take their revenge.

"Do you not see, Elijah? She didn't mean to chase em off. She wanted me dead."

"You're wrong."

"She has always hated me. You know that's true."

"You are raving. And rewriting history to justify your cruelty – as you have always done," Elijah said, bored with his brother's insane ramblings.

"Are you hurt, brother?" Rebekah asked, her eyes flitting to Elijah, to the blood soaking his white shirt, but only for a split-second; she did not dare take her eyes of Niklaus, eyeing him warily like a snake poised to strike. And he would use any distraction to launch his attack. They knew his methods.

"The Dark magic in this blade has weakened me," Elijah admitted, "however the pain is nothing more than what I have experienced in the past." He did not admit the entire truth; that though the physical agony was comparable to any torture he had endured throughout the centuries, it was the emotional torment that would have broken him. The blade used Dark magic to turn every black moment of his life against him – his own dark thoughts, his worst memories, his fears and flaws, compounded by his helplessness, his bitter desire for revenge and unable to take it, reliving the worst things he had ever done to another, sometimes as himself, sometimes through the eyes of his victims – it was a glorious weapon, he had to admit. To force the victim to reassess from different angles their own failings, and their behaviour toward others. The memories that shaped who they were, and the actions they had taken against others to mould their characters too. He had had the blade embedded in his chest for mere hours, but it had felt like a lifetime.

"I shall decide who lives and dies this night," Rebekah said coolly. "I should kill you, for forcing Elijah to suffer. You have not taken enough from him already?"

"You against me?" Klaus crowed. "It's hardly a fair fight, is it?" He smirked disdainfully, condescendingly. "I mean, perhaps if Marcel were here, you'd stand a chance, but I expect he's already found another girl, no doubt younger and prettier."

"You take joy in other people's pain, and then you wonder why I hate you!" Rebekah hissed.

"Yes, and that hatred led you to do what you did. Admit the truth! Admit you wanted me dead!"

"You're insane!"

"Yes! Yes!" Klaus shouted, and he did truly sound as if he had lost his mind – the same way he sounded every time he had one of his little tantrums. Elijah would never tolerate another after tonight. "I am a vicious, heartless monster, and so you summoned Mikael to kill me. Admit it!"

"It's not true!"

"You know what you did! Admit it!"

"I did not wish you dead, Nik, only gone!" Rebekah shouted, her eyes sparkling. "I wanted you _gone_ that I could enjoy my life without you threatening me, looming over me as you do now, vicious and cruel and unrepentant, refusing to acknowledge that the worst man, the worst villain I would ever have to endure is _you_! You stuck me in a box for fifty-two years because I fell in love with Marcel – not three years after we fled this city you stuck a dagger in my heart and erased me from Stefan's memory – you _erased_ me, you erased our past, our future, you stole his _love_. I awakened and it was _you_ who abandoned me in Mystic Falls when Damon Salvatore told you Mikael had found us! Left me, after punishing me for choosing to leave you behind. And when they conspired to kill you, I had that little bitch Elena dagger me in the back because she knew I could never be relied upon to let you die. Even when Mikael was dead you kept us in boxes – you feared I would learn your secret about Mother. You daggered me so you could chase after Silas' cure, you let that bitch murder our _brothers_ for your own selfish need to possess the Cure you didn't even want, you denied me a family! All I had ever wanted for a thousand years! You denied my right to mourn our brother; you stole my right to a family of my own. You betrayed us, let us believe you _dead_ only so you could survive Alaric Saltzman. You cared more about a bloody doppelgänger and your _hybrids_ than you have ever cared about your own family, it's no wonder they would rather have turned a thousand times than be enslaved in unquestioning loyalty to you!" Rebekah was shrieking now, her eyes sparkling with tears, and Elijah subtly moved closer, aware this was the moment Klaus would use to his advantage; when Rebekah let emotion overcome her. "You murdered Tyler's mother – a mother who _loved_ her son unconditionally, just as Mother once loved you – before you ripped the beating heart from her chest! My mother – everything she did to harm us on her return was _your doing_. You murdered Mother and she was forced to watch you abuse us for a millennium, turning us against our own father, turning us into shells of the people we were. And we were good people, once. A thousand years with you…look at us. Look what you've done. Calling Mikael to this city was _nothing_ to what you have done to us over the centuries. You feared Mikael. We live in constant dread of you. Mikael was my father for nineteen years. You have been my brother for well over a thousand. Mikael did not ruin us; you did. You cannot blame him for something that happened a thousand years ago, in another life; everything you have done the last thousand years has made you who you are. And in the thousand years since we were free of him, you have become more villain than Father _ever_ was."

Klaus roared.

The white-oak stake sank into Rebekah's heart, cutting her scream short.

Elijah watched, horrified, unable to move, as Rebekah's desiccating body fell heavily to the ground. The silvered stake glinted in the moonlight, and a sudden silence rang through the cemetery, unbearable, absolute. Klaus panted with rage, looming over Rebekah, the seconds ticking by as Elijah noted that flames did not envelope his sister, as they had Finn, as they had Kol. A breath startled from his lips, as if being doused with cold-water and waking from a gripping nightmare. He stared down at Rebekah with growing realisation.

His eyes darted up to Elijah's face. "Brother – I did not – "

Papa Tunde's blade sank into Klaus' heart before his brother could finish.

Rebekah had not burst into flames. His eyes burning, Elijah clambered over his brother's prone form to grasp the white-oak stake and pull it from Rebekah's heart. Stained with her blood, and his brother's blood, Elijah swallowed the nausea churning in his stomach, bubbling in his throat, burning his eyes, and jostled Rebekah, trying to wake her. He bit his wrist, squeezed a spray of blood into her wound, and knelt beside her, panting with terror.

With a relief more tangible than Rebekah cuddled in his arms, he watched the dark veins in Rebekah's skin disappear as she plumped, a natural glow returning to her fair skin. He groaned in relief, bit his wrist again, and forced it into her mouth, sighing with relief when she latched on to him, feebly at first, then greedily. He held her tight as she suckled him, her fangs keeping his wound open as she drew fiercely, the heady sensation turning his world off-kilter, pure ecstasy. _Connection_. He would gladly sacrifice vitality to give her strength. And he held her close, shuddering from how close he had come to losing her forever. And Rebekah writhed against him, against the grown strewn with offerings, panting, as she sat, and slowly licked his wrist of every last drop of his blood as his skin knitted itself back together. She panted, hugged his arm between her breasts, dropped her brow against his, so their breath mingled and something stung his cheeks.

 _Rebekah_.

"He killed me."

Elijah started to cry, and Rebekah's lower-lip trembled at the sight of him, and she burst into tears and threw herself into his arms. Panting, shuddering with grief – with the potential for such devastating _loss_ – he sat in the moonlit cemetery and wept, hugging his sister to him so tightly anyone but a thousand-year-old vampire would have been crushed. His sister, his Rebekah… Rebekah shook in his arms, but she held him as he wept, whispering sweetness and comfort to him, as he had every time she came to him in her devastation and grief.

"Ssshh…'Lijah," she breathed a sigh of relief as he quieted, face buried in her shoulder. She stroked his hair, and he could taste her tears on the sultry air. "Shhh… The stake did not kill me… He has not killed me, brother…" He took a shuddering breath and pulled himself together, slowly, though, releasing his vicelike grip on her, exhausted by that sudden, inconsolable, all-encompassing terror and grief and _love_ that hit him harder than a freight-train. Seeing that stake pierce Rebekah's heart hurt worse than any blade of Papa Tunde's. He shuddered an exhausted breath, depleted, and sat back, Rebekah's blue eyes glowing in the moonlight, tears staining her cheeks. She cradled his face in her hands, her lower lip trembling, and whispered, "Sshh…" before giving him a tender kiss. He saw remorse in her eyes, the most easily-read of them all. "I am so sorry, Elijah." Tears dripped down her cheeks, from her chin, splattering the top she wore, now ruined with a bloody tear, her undergarments beneath ruined.

He shook his head.

"When I brought Mikael here, I never for a second thought to hurt you," she whispered, and her relief was palpable when he smiled, shrugging it off. He had wondered how Mikael had found them. But now Father was dead. They were free from every tyrant but the very worst; their brother. He gave a watery smile, brushing off any physical harm he had endured; he would heal. And fleeing from New Orleans – from Rebekah and Niklaus – had been…freeing. In the last century he had had the freedom denied Rebekah; the freedom to love, and _grow_. To re-examine who he was outside the warped co-dependency of his family. He would not give back the last century for the world. In smoking them out of their foxhole, Mikael had given Elijah an opportunity.

Now he would give Rebekah that same chance she deserved, had more than earned.

"I know," he smiled, and relief softened her features. A gasping shudder drew her glistening eyes away, and Elijah glanced to his side; Klaus lay on the ground, senseless to anything but his own torment, Papa Tunde's blade embedded in his heart, Dark magic turning his own memories, his own soul, into a weapon against him. The white oak stake glittered silver in the moonlight, stained by Kol and Rebekah's blood. Rebekah's eyes lingered on it.

"It didn't work… The white-oak stake. Why didn't it work, Elijah?" She glanced at him, and Elijah caught her eye; her lips parted. "You knew it would not?"

"I wished to give Niklaus the option, of suffusing his own absurd rage rather than channelling it all into what he does best; punishing his family," Elijah said dully. "He must learn, Rebekah. His actions have consequences; I will no longer tolerate his behaviour. I will not stand aside and allow him to continue as he has… We each have needed to be broken of our old habits. Niklaus' rage and paranoia and cruelty; my indulging him it, taking nothing for myself for fear of his consequences…"

"My misplaced trust," Rebekah said softly. "Being such a fool!"

"You make foolish choices sometimes, Rebekah," he said softly. "You are not a fool. Sometimes I believe you are the strongest of us. Forever unafraid to seek joy in spite of the consequences."

"I am not unafraid, Elijah," Rebekah said softly, giving Klaus an angry look as he shuddered. "I refuse to let him win. I fight… Every waking day I fight…and I lose."

"No more," Elijah said, delicately lifting her chin with his curled finger. "Too long have I disappointed you, sister."

"You could never disappoint me, Elijah," Rebekah said, smiling, and the smile was sweet and sad at the same time. "My lovely brother… I don't know where I'd be without you." She cast the white-oak stake a scornful look, and it gentled as she turned her blue eyes on him, her expression deflating, sad, glittering, aghast. She had almost died. Been condemned to a life lingering on the Other Side, alone, endless.

"I will no longer tolerate Niklaus' behaviour toward us, or any other," Elijah vowed, his expression drawing Rebekah's gaze, and she took his word for what it was. His oath. His new promise. Overriding the one manipulated from them out of Niklaus' falsehood, stripping them of their lives, their freedom, their dignity, the very stuff of which they had once been made: fierce loyalty, determination, resourcefulness, _kindness_ , strong family ties. "Tonight was the last night, this the last attempt he ever makes to harm one of us. Always and forever I will put our family before our brother's needs."

"You, me, the baby," Rebekah smiled softly. "Hayley, if she'll allow it."

"Marcel," Elijah said softly. Angry as he was, he ignored the niggling voice inside his head – Niklaus' – whispering poison about Marcel's motives and intentions. He would not start this new chapter of their lives by emulating Klaus' behaviour. He was not his brother.

Rebekah's eyes flitted to his face. "He was our family, once, before he was ever your lover, dear sister."

"I know you regretted not allowing yourself a greater influence on his upbringing," Rebekah sighed. "He often spoke of it, angry you abandoned your role as tutor. Left him to our brother."

"I did it, to _protect_ him from our brother," Elijah mumbled, his heart squeezing painfully.

"I know," Rebekah smiled sweetly. "One day I think Marcel will accept that truth, too. He's still too hurt you abandoned him, even though it was for his own good… And speaking of that… You wanted Niklaus to try and kill me with the stake. But you knew he couldn't kill me."

The most exhausting part of Niklaus' personality was his being so utterly predictable. He had intended to and did kill Rebekah with the white-oak stake. And, because he was the big-brother, and he loved his sister more than he yearned for Niklaus' happiness, he had thought twelve steps ahead, intending to protect Rebekah at the cost of his own life. Then perhaps Niklaus might learn his lesson.

But Anise Lavalière had ensured that in spite of Niklaus' intentions, none of had ended up on their funeral pyre tonight. Intending to ensure their safety, she had unknowingly levelled the playing-field for the first time in centuries.

"Niklaus refuses to amend his behaviour; as I said, we each had to be brutally broken of our old habits," Elijah said. Watching Niklaus finally sink that white-oak stake into his beloved sister's heart, though he had known it was coming and had gladly accepted the help of a young witch to ensure Rebekah would come to no harm, was the final straw. It was the last weakened, frayed link tying him to whatever warped co-dependence, blind brotherly loyalty he had to Klaus.

Rebekah's death was the only thing that could ever have ensured Elijah turned his back utterly on his vow.

The idea that Klaus could do such a thing to their sister, who had stood by his side for a thousand years…his stomach churned at the idea of what he could do to the child tucked safely in Hayley's womb.

Elijah had a new vow, now, and he made it only to himself. No-one but he himself could ever hold himself to it, and if he ever failed, his shame would ensure it never happened a second time. He would not turn his back on Niklaus entirely; he was their brother. But no longer would Niklaus be the only one who benefited from their vow.

He would ensure the safety and happiness of his _family_. Rebekah, Hayley, the baby. And _himself_.

Elijah planned to follow his baby-sister's example, and chase joy. Whatever form it took, he wished to luxuriate in it. Selfish as it was, he wished to indulge in unfettered rapture. To strive for things, to _build_ , to create something worthy of what he knew he was capable of, had held himself back from pursuing out of the deference that had been trained into him over the centuries by Niklaus' cruelty.

He wished to shed that ingrained habit of…holding himself back. Not striving for things, _not_ living as the man he knew he could be. Allowing Niklaus to override every attempt he made to create something for himself. He was to be an uncle soon, and Hayley had set a precedent for their involvement. He wished to be…worthy of that child. He wanted to be the example they looked up to, the uncle they loved, confided in, admired. He wished to set an example.

With a wry smile, he hoped Marcel could teach him how. Even as a boy, even as a brutalised slave, he had had such a natural rapport with people, even complete strangers; he built strong friendships very quickly, and they lasted. He had almost envied the boy's natural camaraderie, his…earnest friendship, his integrity.

Small wonder Rebekah had fallen in love with the man Marcel had grown into. Everything good they wished to be themselves, denied them by circumstance and by Niklaus' constant cruelty. They had taken the clay and formed something marvellous; and that creature had developed a mind of his own, and bested them.

"How did you know the stake wouldn't kill me?"

Elijah exhaled a sigh. "Anise Lavalière's sense of decency."

"That Harvest witch who killed Céleste?" Rebekah blinked. "Why would she murder a witch and help the Originals?"

"Perhaps Miss Lavalière believes in _balance_ , over power and vengeance?" Elijah pondered, troubled that Anise said she had been watching them, but impressed she had taken the initiative to spy without consequence from the Other Side. "She executed a traitor, and protected us from a tyrant."

"Why would she do that?"

"Kindness."

* * *

 **A.N.** : I just love Elijah. I really do. And I love his and Rebekah's relationship, though I wish they would've explored it outside of their connection with Klaus. They're the only two siblings who genuinely adore each other! Oh, also, didja like that bit about Davina?


	4. Coming Out of the Coffin

**A.N.** : An update! Shocking, I know. The pitfalls of a full-time job and writer's block. So, the next few chapters will be Originals-sparse as Anise reintegrates into her life.

* * *

 _Eternity in an Hour_

 _04_

Coming Out of the Coffin

* * *

Those who didn't know to look for it would never find the historic Lavalière home. Quirky magic protected its location, nestled inconspicuously in the heart of land the family had owned for centuries. Small fields flourished with late-summer crops, one of the oldest cotton mills in the South draw income as a working museum, and the bayou teemed with life, a raised walkway winding its way through the picturesque Louisiana landscape shrouded by trees, Spanish moss and flowers growing rampant like a thick, fragrant carpet in spring and summer, a tranquil breeze always chasing away the breathless humidity.

For the first time in nearly a year her footsteps created sound as she padded barefoot along the raised walkway, through the bayou, where the trees sighed and swayed and the light glinted through Spanish moss and early-morning mists swirling, disturbed by her movement. Her heart squeezed as she wandered through the grasses speckled with late-summer wildflowers, listening to the tick of the cicadas and the birds singing the dawn chorus, her pace picking up as she neared the main property.

From the bayou walkway she came first upon the meadows where she had played as a little girl; the tall swaying grasses ticking with life and speckled with bright wildflowers gave way to orchards of gnarled apple trees, fickle cherry, oranges, plums and figs entwined with roses and clematis, their flock of chickens cleaning the bee-yard. Granny's least-liked chore was tending the chickens, and the wicker basket was always left at the wattle pear-arch to the kitchen-gardens. Anise picked up the basket, gathered the apron with pockets stashed with feed, and scattered it to the girls before she went about gathering the fresh eggs. Leaving the girls in the orchard to continue their work, she padded through the sprawling kitchen-garden, the wattle beds overflowing, as she stooped to pick fresh spinach and raspberries for breakfast, everything still kissed with mist. It was strange and glorious to feel the water slick and cold against her skin, the heaviness of gravity pulling her body, the way her long hair tickled her bare arms, even the itchiness of dried blood on her skin, the kiss of the early sun on her bare shoulders.

Through the kitchen-gardens and out the other side, she glanced across a familiar path to the crumbling weather-worn redbrick walls, Granny's English walled-garden full of roses and every exquisite flower that could be dreamed of, but turned and followed the path to the house, under the arbours - the first, heavy with strawberries and squashes and frilly white clematis the size of dinner-plates, the other, heavy with lemons, passion-fruits, peas and gorgeous yellow roses. The ground was almost overgrown with yarrow, dill, fennel, marigolds, nasturtiums, parsley and lemon-balm - Mother Nature's attractants and deterrents to protect and deflect from their chosen crops the bugs that would destroy them. Granny was well-seasoned in companion crops. Many a young herbalist came to her from any of the Nine Covens for her advice.

The gardens had always been Anise's favourite part of the house - her inheritance; it was the place she was proud of, was _covetous_ toward. She knew how lucky she was to enjoy it. The sound of the flower-gardens humming with bees, butterflies waltzing about in the air in the day, fireflies glittering in the evening among the candles flickering in old lanterns hanging from creaking boughs. For nearly a year this property had been her sanctuary, even on the Other Side, where she could wander the gardens and enjoy the view, if not the scent of the roses or the warmth of the sun on her face; she watched Granny tend the gardens, and learned.

Three centuries of Lavalière ancestors had lived here, lending their experiences and tastes, unusual antiques, questionable artwork and secrets hidden behind false panels and concealed closets to the house, which had grown up organically, added onto by successive generations to create a tangle of breathless libraries; salons; mosaic-tiled internal courtyards overflowing with jasmine and lush greenery; sweeping, lazy terracotta-shingled porches groaning with plant-pots and fragrant from drying herbs dangling from the ceiling whirling with idle fans, the paint-faded shutters creaking in the breeze, knocking gently against the window-boxes vibrant with flowers; the pergola groaning with figs and glory-lilies, perfect for long dinners; the elegantly-painted drawing-room inspired by French chateaux. Early dawn sunlight glittered off the murky glass of the Victorian greenhouse, glowing green inside from tropical, rare plants and flowers Granny and other adventurous relatives had collected from all over the world.

There was a breathless quality to the estate, timeless and sun-warmed, sparsely-furnished by homey, welcoming, cosy and elegant. It was in the tranquil warmth of the sun making the insects in the overflowing flowerbeds tick, in the organic, lived-in, slightly worn nature of the terracotta tiles and sun-bleached paint on the shutters, the creaking of the porch steps giving beneath her bare feet, the wood already warmed by the sun. And there was magic here, in the way the flowers, past their best in any other part of the Northern Hemisphere by July, were still in full bloom in late-August, in the sense of time moving slower, the modern world left at the borders of the property, a sense of safety. Of being _home_. Three centuries of witches had lived and loved and fought and farmed this earth; and magic was absorbed in every inch of the land, interwoven with every fibre of the house, almost as live and sentient as Anise was. The house _knew_ things. It kept their secrets, and its silence; it protected them from danger.

She gazed at the faded buttery-yellow back door, frowning gently. The house protected them, kept their secrets. Granny lived in there, disconnected from her Ancestors but still vulnerable to their influence if they chose to lash out… She backtracked to one of the little garden shed lean-tos, taking an ancient knife from one of the terracotta pots, and approached the house. At every corner, above every doorframe, she carved a tiny sigil.

To protect the occupants from prying eyes and evil intent.

In her ruined satin dress and tangled hair, her bare feet grubby, Anise carried the basket of eggs and fresh spinach to the back-door. A faded sage-green shutter waggled in the breeze, almost like a wave, and as the door opened of its own accord, and welcomed her over the threshold with the scent of freshly-baked sourdough bread and hints of turmeric and curry-powder in the air, strains of 1920s jazz drifting to her with the excited yip and snuffle of puppies, she thought she heard the house groan as the old wood settled, almost as it was relieved she was home.

The worn rugs were soft beneath her bare feet, and she smiled, setting the basket down, and sank to her knees as her family's dogs scrabbled toward her like a tiny horde ready to nibble and lick her toes. Artichoke, Linguiça and Dignity, three heartbeats at her feet: two Miniature Dachshunds - Artichoke, a stately old wire-haired with a tartan bowtie, and very pretty short-haired Linguiça, a first-time mother now – and Dignity, their beautiful Cavalier King Charles Spaniel whose own litter looked like fuzzy jelly-beans curled in a basket.

The house started to settle, the old beams and worn floors settling with noticeable creaks, the drapes opening of their own accord to let in the sunlight, fans whirling slowly in greeting as she wandered past, and she found Granny coiled on her antique yoga-mat, Anise's own unfurled beside hers, her eyes closed. Waiting.

She eyed the neatly-stacked tarot cards on the scrubbed table, alongside the elaborate water-tap and absinthe bottle and sugar-cubes and the embroidery-hoop; the stack of 45" records and Granny's red-leather gramophone and the spice-chest beside a large pestle and mortar, the range fired up and issuing glorious scents that made her stomach growl with sudden awareness of how hungry she was. Anise hadn't eaten in a year.

She stripped out of her ruined ivory satin dress, down to her underwear – her bra still stained with old blood – and climbed onto her purple mat, assuming the same position as Granny - and groaning when she found it wasn't so easy. It had been a while since she had practiced yoga – with _gravity_ – and Granny's positions were gentler, easier ones because of it. Wondering how Granny had known, but not at all surprised she did, and why she had gotten her cards out, Anise practiced her yoga in silence, listening to the jazz music, the hum and tick of nature outside the house, the birds singing outside open windows.

On the Other Side, she had practiced her yoga every morning beside Granny. But she had forgotten what it felt like to be _tied_ to things, the deliciousness of that connection thrumming through her veins, live and golden. She wasn't used to _gravity_ , pulling on her. She hadn't felt the tug and quiver of her muscles from overexertion, she hadn't been tired in over a year, hadn't _slept_ – and her body itself had been dead for a year. It was no wonder it had been such a fight to come back to life – the muscle atrophy alone had to have contributed to her hellish struggle. Her muscles had loosened a little on her barefoot walk home, and she took to her yoga-mat, feeling the strain of her muscles. Being dead had put her out of shape, even for the gentlest stretches. How was she ever going to get back into the calibre of gymnastics moves she had been performing before her death?

One day at a time.

Muscles aching, she groaned and climbed off her yoga-mat as Granny slipped nimbly up, silver-haired and glam, serene and smiling with her eyes as she offered an arm to Anise, gently pulling her into a full-body hug.

She had missed _contact_. Human contact – hugs, tickling, cuddling up watching TV, lazing about on a picnic-blanket in the sun reading with Chantal, poking each other with their toes. She had missed _touch_. The Other Side was barren of it, of any kind of touch let alone human contact.

"Lovely to have you back, poppet," Granny said warmly, not letting her go; maybe she sensed Anise needed it. Maybe she sensed the turmoil in Anise's head, and her heart – she had executed one of their own, mercilessly – remorseful, but unrepentant about the necessity of killing Céleste Dubois, who had infected their coven like a parasite for centuries. Anise had no tolerance for self-absorbed traitors, and her mind went briefly to Davina, swallowing the lump of guilt that rose. That was the one and only time she would feel badly about Davina's loss of magic. She had abused her gifts, disrespected their heritage, betrayed them, felt no compassion for the innocent – Anise had nothing to feel guilty about; she had protected what was left of their coven, after Davina had helped the vampires destroy it.

Granny inhaled sharply, releasing Anise, and sifted her polished fingertips through Anise's tangled hair, a wondering, faraway, thoughtful look on her face, her bright eyes sparkling like tourmalines, all but erasing the fine lines around them. "You came back with a bit of a bang, didn't you?" she smirked, pride radiating from her as she chuckled, and turned to pull a vegetable curry out of the range.

Anise glanced at her grandmother, licking her lips hesitantly. "What… Why do you say that?"

"I can smell it on you," Granny said, and Anise avoided tripping over Artichoke, approaching the range to prepare the fresh greens. "I'm afraid sometimes it is necessary."

"Murder?"

"That woman should have died centuries ago," Granny said sternly, her English accent as crisp as the Dowager Countess'. "You only prevented her from ruining more and more lives. You brought justice to the girls whose lives she stole."

"It still feels shitty," she mumbled.

"Good," Granny said, and Anise was reminded of Elijah Mikaelson - telling her that she needed to worry only when she stopped feeling bad for brutality. "We've far too many creatures of the night in this city who care nothing for the chaos they wreak. It is high time we learned to be accountable."

"What do your cards say?" Anise asked curiously, peering closer at the hand-painted cards.

"Too much to read in one sitting," Granny sighed evasively, and lifted her palm, the cards stacking themselves before Anise could get a good eyeful of the reading. Granny was very well-schooled in reading tarot; the absinthe she consumed only aided her ability to decipher the meaning behind the cards. Granny knew things she shouldn't, and like a miser with gold coins, gave information in tiny doses. She said knowing too much was dangerous; she never read for herself. Anise set the table for breakfast, preparing her favourite sweet lassi to drink as Granny checked on the daal, thinking over what she had done last night. Céleste Dubois's execution; neutralising the White Oak Stake within Lafayette Cemetery… Meeting Elijah Mikaelson.

She hadn't offered to help the Original out of any long-con; she thought it was the most decent thing to do. A dead Original may be beneficial to the world in general, but there was no telling what would happen to Rebekah's two warring brothers, to Marcel, to New Orleans itself, if she died irrevocably. She had seen the way Rebekah and Elijah Mikaelson were together. She hadn't protected Rebekah Mikaelson so that Elijah would look at her and see a potential ally. There was too much going on, everything too convoluted, with political alliances shifting on a daily basis, to think about an endgame.

All she wanted, really, was to consolidate what little influence the coven had left, rebuild whatever could be salvaged, and provide a stable foundation for the future generations – _her_ generation, and the babies – to inherit. She didn't care about power-grabbing; she cared about her friends avoiding execution and the terror of modern-day witch-hunts.

She wanted to _live_ ; and she wanted to be able to enjoy it.

"I will tell you one thing," Granny said, taking a biryani out of the range. "Last night will not be your only meeting with Elijah Mikaelson." Anise started, glancing at Granny, whose eyes were twinkling with mischief; Anise sighed, used to her grandmother's mercurial, hellraising personality.

"How did you know I've met Elijah Mikaelson?"

"You were just thinking it," Granny said, staring at her, as if this should have been obvious. "Go and wash your hands, we'll eat together."

"Is Joe not joining us?" Anise asked; she always loved when Joe came to visit. He and Granny were hilarious together. And he told the best stories about Prohibition New Orleans, when being 'jazz mad' was a legit legal defence in a court of law.

"No, he is inundated," Granny said, shooting her a sly look. Anise beamed.

"I'll stop by the store," she said. She had been helping Joe do inventory at his vinyl shop, _Vinyl Resting Place_ , since she was thirteen, and he paid her either in cash or records – only if he approved the record choice, of course.

"And beyond that?" Granny asked. "Have we any plans?" She gave Anise a twinkly-eyed smile, as if she knew what was going on inside Anise's head.

"I…have some things I'd like to get figured out," Anise said on a gentle sigh. Her old life she now mentally referred to, to Chantal's amusement, as 'B.S.'. Before Sacrifice. Now she was A.R. After Resurrection. She had been bound with the Ancestors because of the sacrifice; and now because of it, she was free to live. And death put things in perspective. She had missed a year of school; she hadn't been to gymnastics meets; her place on social and charity committees had been filled; even the coven couldn't provide her with a seamless reintegration into her old life. She had to start fresh – and she was surprised to find out that she wasn't afraid of that. There was no dread; she didn't feel like it was the first day of a new school. But her head did ache at the thought of everything she had to do, and everything she _wanted_ to do – everything she had been chomping at the bit to do once she was alive again, and now that she was, had no idea where to start.

She knew what she wanted, just not how to get it.

"Such as?" Granny smiled.

"I need to enrol at school, and I'd like to get back…maybe not to gymnastics, but something," Anise said. "And there's…there's the coven. What's left of it."

"Would you like to hear my opinion?"

"Yes," Anise said. Granny never gave her opinion unless asked for: and Anise was wise enough to know to ask for it.

"While the Old Ones bicker and war, utilise everything your generation has at its disposal to form something for yourselves," Granny said sagely, and Anise frowned, biting her lip thoughtfully. Granny sighed. "You're not the only one to be left orphaned by the Harvest. And the disenfranchised make for marvellous targets - either by zealots of our own kind, or of the enemy."

"Do they have to be enemies?"

"Historically they have been. However, there are few ancients here in this city, and this world we live in is a very different one than has ever come before us," Granny said slowly. "The vampires have long lives, the witches have a long memory, and the werewolves share a long history. But recent events have culled the numbers on all sides; only the very wily, the very cowardly and the very young have survived so far. And the young have been brought up to see the world very differently, they will refashion the world in their own image, with their own values. And you, my poppet, will be the chief architect."

Anise blushed. Granny had such unyielding faith in her talents, more than Anise had ever had in herself in anything beyond gymnastics and successfully navigating her school's social scene without major drama. The other girls had thought being chosen for the Harvest made them _special_. She didn't believe that now any more than she had then, but at least now she felt a connection to the coven as a whole, a responsibility to the collective, their history - and particularly to their _future_. She had been chosen by the Ancestors, had been killed and resurrected, spent nearly a year, an eternity, in their company, learning from them, to return…altered. Enhanced by knowledge and a kind of clarity, a purpose - even if she had no idea how to get where she wanted to be… She had watched, and made notes on how she would change things if she could. Now, she just had to be brazen enough to attempt to.

And Granny had just hinted at her first step. The other survivors. The young ones, the ones who had been left alone, and frightened, and completely at a loss what to do, who to confide in, scared and grief-stricken and angry.

"What if nobody responds?" Anise asked quietly.

"They will," Granny smiled gently. "You'll coax some, convince others, and drag the reluctant in by their teeth…and one day they will be glad of it." Anise gazed at her grandmother, absurdly young-looking considering her curious (and undetermined) age.

She had always been amused that her aristocratic English grandmother refused to use utensils when they ate; in true Indian fashion, she ate with her hands, using roti or naan. Granny's early life had been all about rebellion against her stiff noble family; she had fled their stately home to drive ambulances on the front-lines, danced her way through the Prohibition, tippled new cocktails with her fierce force-of-nature Jewish maternal-grandmamma in Manhattan and the Hamptons – very Edith Wharton, only with witchcraft and no corsets – only to marry a one-armed WWI survivor, the younger son of an English duke with, scandalously, six illegitimate children. They had moved to India in the later-Twenties when 'Poppa' had been stationed out there as part of His Majesty's government, and Granny had rarely eaten 'Western' food since. Anise's mother Posy was the product of, Anise _thought_ , Granny's third or possibly fourth marriage; Anise was constantly learning new secrets from Granny's unusually long and very colourful life.

Granny had left India before the Great British Empire truly crumbled, before India was returned to its people, before the political chaos _that_ had caused; she had pursued her frontlines-friend Joe to New Orleans, fallen in love with the sultry bayous and glittering beaches, and only ever left it to pursue that 'flighty temptress, Adventure'.

Granny had seen many empires rise and fall; she had experienced what came after. Chaos; rejuvenation. Progress.

"You think I can do…this?"

"I believe you can have whatever you wish," Granny said, snaring her with a look that snatched the breath from Anise's lungs, "as long as you are willing to accept the consequences."

Anise licked her lips anxiously. "What…what consequences are they?"

"Responsibility, in all its many punishing, glorious forms," Granny sighed. "The benefits…and the blame. People will praise you and lash out at you in a heartbeat, blame you for decisions made, petition you for favours, they will test you, try to break you, follow you, respect your worth, despise your influence…"

"I - I don't want _power_ ," Anise said, startled, appalled and filled with dread at the idea of entering into the Game of Thrones that was the current socio-political situation amongst the supernatural of New Orleans, and Granny smiled fondly at her, the lines at the corners of her eyes more pronounced. "I thought you always said that power is only given to those who'll lower themselves to pick it up."

"I have said that," Granny sighed. "And then you were chosen for the Harvest. Your Ancestors wouldn't blow their bullets; they will have been watching you since you were born. You were chosen for a reason, poppet. They have faith in you, just as you did in the Harvest. I know you did not walk blindly into that cemetery. You knew what you were walking into."

Anise sighed, thinking of Daddy. She would never see him again. When Anise had not returned from Lafayette Cemetery, and all hope seemed lost, Daddy had shipped out to the desert and gotten himself killed. Wife and daughter, both dead; he had gone to his death seeking them.

He had given up.

And that was on Davina. When she had refused to die for her friends, she had taken Anise's father from her. She had taken many fathers from many friends.

"' _Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die_ '," Anise murmured, and Granny's smile crumpled for a heartbeat, her eyes glittering with tears. They disappeared, though, and Anise was glad; she had sobbed for days on the Other Side, shrieking soundlessly in her heartbreak and rage and grief, and a good amount of her rage had gone into stripping Davina of her magic, she would never deny that she had not thought about her own loss when she punished Davina. The Defector would be written into the history of their coven as a warning: faithlessness and betrayal were never to be rewarded. And death was unnecessary when setting a lasting example.

"Quoting Alfred, Lord Tennyson to me," Granny said, smiling. Anise shrugged delicately. Granny sighed. "What are you thinking about?" Granny asked, and Anise lifted her eyes to her vibrant grandmother's lined face.

"When I was…on the Other Side, I watched everyone. I kept going back to the bayou to watch the wolves turn into men," Anise confessed, flushing. Every month, she had traipsed out to the bayou to watch the gorgeous macabre event. And there was one she liked the look of when he was human. "Céleste created a potion to reverse the curse on the Crescent pack…"

"And you don't wish the curse to be reversed?"

"What? No! I don't think the potion will do what she said it would."

"How so?"

Anise frowned, trying to find the words. "This witch…body-hopped through the last three centuries, fostering a grudge against the Original family - against Klaus for killing her original body; against Elijah Mikaelson for choosing his family over her… Everything that's happened the last few weeks, with Bastianna and Genevieve and Papa Tunde…she orchestrated it to punish the Originals, to try and break Elijah of his vow to his brother and sister."

"Always and forever," Granny murmured in an undertone, her expression thoughtful. Anise wondered how she knew Elijah Mikaelson's mantra.

"But Elijah did break his vow," Anise said. "He chose to save Hayley and her baby over protecting them, punishing the ones who dared to plot against them." Granny gazed sombrely at her.

"And the potion?"

"She told Elijah the potion would work because changing the wolves back to men would take Hayley farther from him… I think her perspective was warped by her hate, and that Céleste _wanted_ to see that Elijah was in love with this Hayley girl, so she did… I watched her create a potion to reverse the curse, but…I don't trust that it will do exactly what the werewolves will hope."

"Why?"

"Because Elijah chose Hayley over his brother and sister, and Céleste dodged death for three centuries by being steps ahead… She would've wanted the last word; she would've had a backup plan, something to kick Elijah in the tender parts just when he'd thought everything was said and done and they were safe."

"So…?"

"So I don't trust the potion she made, not one she brewed at the bayou-edge, under duress, fuelled by rage and satisfaction that she was winning…" Anise sighed.

"Who has the potion now?"

"The pregnant girl, Hayley Marshall. She's one of the Crescent wolves, but she wasn't raised in New Orleans," Anise said thoughtfully, and something flickered in Granny's pale eyes. "Elijah Mikaelson told her the potion would work; I don't think she'll trust me when I say it won't."

"Why shouldn't she?"

"The coven's been trying to kill her since she got to town," Anise said, rolling her eyes.

" _You_ are not the coven," Granny said gently.

"I'm tainted by association," Anise sighed. "I've been Scarlet Lettered by their evil."

"It is interesting how often desperation passes off as evil," Granny mused. "Surely, soon to be a mother herself, this Hayley girl may appreciate the lengths family will go to, to protect their own."

"I don't think she's had much family," Anise said. "Explains the chip on her shoulder and the false bravado… She has gumption, I'll give her that…misguided, but…I don't know. I don't know how to…"

"Manipulation, torture, blackmail…people always forget the simplest way of getting what they want," Granny said mildly. "Just _ask_. Perhaps bathe first." Anise smiled at Granny's quirky look, her wink.

"I was thinking, I could go see Poppy," Anise said, and Granny's eyes twinkled. Her vibrant friend owned her own amazing salon, and had been wheedling Anise for ages before the sacrifice to let her have her way with Anise. Because of her gymnastics, and the opinions of the Mean Girls at school, Anise had always dreaded Poppy's idea of a makeover. Now, she was eager to embrace it - and to tease Poppy with all the delicious titbits she had picked up as a ghost.

"You just got home, you're going to leave again?" Granny teased.

"Not yet, but spirits talk," Anise sighed. "People will know I'm back..."

"You sound troubled," Granny said. "Why?"

"One of the witches Céleste resurrected is still around," Anise said.

"She hasn't gone back to the dust yet," Granny said.

"And she's vicious, beguiling, and she came back entitled," Anise moaned, rubbing her forehead. Clawing her way back to life had taken everything she had; executing Céleste, at the same time ensuring her magic could not flow back to the resurrected Davina, had depleted her reserves; gravity, heat and humidity and a fully stomach for the first time in a year were all combining with anxiety and stress of the unknown, of the future, giving her a headache, nausea, and the irrepressible desire to go to sleep.

"And you came back exhausted," Granny sighed. "Come on, poppet. Bath time - and _bed_."

An hour later, she felt human again. For the first time in a year.

She had floated in boil-a-lobster bathwater scented with Granny's bath-oils, scrubbing the dried blood and dirt off with a loofah and a sugar-scrub that left her skin tingling; she shaved her legs, and hid under the bubbles of a fresh bath as Granny combed organic cleansers and conditioners through her long, tangled hair. She slathered on moisturising camellia body-butter and pulled on fresh pyjamas, her first outfit change in a year, and on instinct folded her bloodstained Harvest dress into a Ziploc, tucking it into the back of her closet in the bedroom that now felt alien to her. She slipped between fresh cotton sheets lightly scented with camomile and lavender, Linguiça cuddling up at her ankles, strains of jazz playing softly downstairs while Granny pottered about, and fell into a deep, blissfully dreamless sleep.

* * *

 **A.N.** : Shout-out to Sheila Bennett, who died too soon. Good grannies are hard to come by, and must be protected.


End file.
